The Washington City Paper newspaper is ending its print edition after 41 years. The paper lives on via a member-supported WordPress site now. The City Paper team published a long and beautifully-written article about the transition from print to digital: From a technical standpoint, my generation of City People has a significantly easier time producing…
This article from Nieman Lab is a good summary of why local publishers matter (and WordPress is their main tool). The article is a summary of a research paper. To sum it up in a sentence: When papers are sold to corporate owners, the number of local articles can fall by 68%. 1. Acquisition leads…
PublishPress Blocks is one of the most popular plugins for Gutenberg blocks with over 30,000 users. In the latest release of PublishPress Blocks Pro, you’ll find some really cool new design options, including these: Google Fonts: You can choose from over 1,000 fonts to use in your blocks. Content Display block: This block is the…
Quartz is a WordPress publisher that is taking down their paywall. They’ve been going 10 years now and have gone through a few different business models. It looks like they’re moving to selling ads and also premium newsletters. This post explains the thinking behind Quartz’s move.
I got talking to a publisher in California this week: Moonshine Ink in California. They have been publishing for over 20 years. They’re currently WordPress-based, with a print edition. We chatted because they use the PublishPress Authors plugin that our team develop. What particularly stood out to me with Moonshine Ink was the wonderful job…
If you’re in the New York area, you may have heard of Schneps Media or at least you’ve seen their publications. Schneps run dozens of local newspapers and they’re standardized their digital versions on WordPress. Their sites focus on specific areas and communities in New York. They cover local neighborhood news, Spanish-language groups, LGBQT issues,…
We started PublishPress because high-quality journalism is really important, and almost all new, high-quality journalism uses WordPress. The Cardinal News is a great new example from Virginia that launched in early 2022. They have a staff of five journalists, all of whom work remotely. The site is online-only and non-profit. They cover southwest Virginia, an…
We have the opportunity for you: The Cordova Times is 108 year old WordPress-based local newspaper and it is available for free. The small weekly in remote South-Central Alaska (only accessible by boat or plane) has won a lot of awards including “Alaska’s Best Weekly” for two years in a row. The newspaper is owned…
The Nieman Lab has a story up today about what it’s like to launch a newspaper. The writer launched his paper called Lookout in California 18 months ago and has an interesting story to tell. They aren’t using WordPress, but he’s part of a group of publishing start-ups and many of them are, including LBPost.com…
PublishPress Series is the best way to manage newspaper and magazine issues in WordPress. To help more users, we’ve just moved one of the most useful features from the Pro version to the Free version. All users of PublishPress Series now have access to the “Publish Series” screen. This is available under the “Posts” link…