One of my favorite ways to make sense of what's happening inside the digital publishing industry is Brian Morrissey's the Rebooting. If you're anywhere near digital publishing, I highly recommend subscribing to his newsletter.
Today he calls out a bright spot with local journalism and what Keith Pepper is building with Rough Draft. I remember talking to Keith when he had the initial idea to revive a local newspaper, and said his goal was to build something "meaningful, not massive."
Sounds simple enough. But if you track what's going on in digital publishing today, too many companies have gone the other direction, hellbent on becoming massive, if not very meaningful (spoiler alert: many of those companies aren't around any more).
Rough Draft is a gem here in Atlanta. It feels almost old fashioned. I bump into people who start talking about what's going on, what shows they're going to, what their families are planning for the weekend, and invariably we realize we've both read the same piece in Rough Draft.
At a time when there isn't a lot of optimism over media (see the not-so-gentle recent New Yorker piece, "Is the Media Prepared for an Extinction-Level Event?"), local journalism deserves a lot more attention than it gets. People have an endless appetite to know what's going on around them, in their own communities.
Full credit to people like Keith for bringing that to life and bringing people together. Seems like a model bigger media companies should look to follow.
Solutions Architect Iron Mountain
1moWTG Ben!!!