What Lookout Local got right in Eugene-Springfield

Going from zero to the second-largest newsroom between Portland and Sacramento in 18 months is not for the faint of heart. 

When something like this happens, we should all take notice and see what we might learn and apply back home. 

Your friends at Blue Engine have an up-close look at the Lookout Local team’s expansion from Santa Cruz to Eugene-Springfield thanks to coaching them across the Knight Foundation’s Growth Challenge and the Google News Initiative’s Growth Catalyst. 

As a Blue Engine coach and founder of the local news publication, VTDigger, I got the opportunity to talk with the Lookout team and gather insights that I now get to share with all of you on what they got right in Eugene.

Here are the moves we'd put in front of you first.

This white paper is published with support from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation’s Growth Challenge Fund.

It's the one most of us get wrong: you can always drop prices, but it’s much harder to raise ‘em.

Lookout Plus launched in Eugene at $250 – or $500 or $1000, if readers opted for those levels – for founding members. 

They went right to their market’s most hardcore journalism supporters and asked them to support the mission in a big way – and they did!

"Founding Membership was new to Eugene, and it generated revenue before we published a word," said Ashley Harmon, Lookout's chief of staff. "Those members have also renewed at a better rate than any group we have seen so far. This is their paper, so to speak, and they're proud to have been part of it from the beginning."

Lookout has worked assiduously to drive value for higher-paying supporters, including bundling The New York Times’ Games, Cooking and The Athletic into their Plus tier and offering a One-for-One tier where $365 gets you your own membership plus a gifted membership for a local teacher. Both have seen significant uptake.

Overall, Lookout's flexible subscription approach now generates 60% of the company's earned revenue with basic rates ranging from $165 to $199 per year. (Election coverage, major event coverage and all Spanish-language content are always accessible).

Lookout Santa Cruz won the Chamber of Commerce's small business startup of the year award in 2022. That is not a side note.

That posture shows up in revenue practices, too. Santa Cruz has 50 marketing partners at $1,500-$6,000 a deal, all of them local. They carried this feeling to Eugene with similarly strong results. 

The point isn't to be “pro business.” The point is to remember that you’re one of them and to see the world through their eyes both as a newsroom and a business enterprise.

The nonprofit versus for-profit news debate is only outstripped by moralizing about paywalls (can you tell we’re over it?).  

Lookout’s experience suggests the useful answer is to learn from all, and adopt the best bits that work for your enterprise. 

Lookout is a public benefit corporation. It raised $3.5 million in philanthropy, a combination of local and national, for the Eugene launch. Nationally, it partners with fiscal agents including the Lenfest Institute and the Local Media Association. Its company structure enables it to make its Community Voices opinion section a robust center of civic discussion, and allows it to endorse candidates at election time — something a 501(c)(3) can't do. 

Lookout’s ad operation produces substantial and growing revenue, incorporating modern “promoted content”, borrowed from the New York Times’ Paid Post model, and wide-ranging digital formats, partnered with Broadstreet, across its product suite. Like print news companies of yore, it also incorporates such staples as obituaries and legals.

What Lookout’s experience suggests is that the best nonprofit newsrooms share much with for-profit efforts, and vice versa.

Lookout could have launched Eugene remotely. It didn't. It took main street office space, put up prominent signage, and spent 18 months in living rooms, wine bars, Rotary meetings and senior learning groups before publishing anything.

Blue Engine's Lynne Brennen, who coached the team for two years, calls out this subtext: "Part of their brand promise was, 'We're not going to be Gannett.'"

This means being present in the places you serve in big, obvious ways. What are those ways for you?

Lookout is not trying to be everything. Doctor is explicit about the targets for future expansion opportunities. 

First, the team is clear on the fact that their model is likely best suited for communities between 200,000 and perhaps 1 million people with a sweet spot in the middle of that range. 

Then, they go looking for a spirit of “identity, pride and connectedness.”

With that in mind, Lookout will be growing again very soon, taking the business to two to three more West Coast markets with an expected 75 employees by 2028. 

By streamlining their understanding of where they want to go, they gain focus on their organizational goals and credibility with funders looking to support them. There’s much to be gained from a similarly clear understanding of where your organization wants to go next.

This white paper is presented by Blue Engine Collaborative with support from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation.