No. 01·June 8, 2026·2 min read
You Are an Audience Platform
A local publisher isn't a newspaper that sells ads. It's the most trusted audience in its market, and it monetizes almost none of what that's worth.
Field NotesBuilt Revenue
Field Notes
Dispatches on rebuilding local-media revenue, from inside the operation.
No. 02·June 11, 2026·7 min read
Own the Everyday
Habit, not headlines, builds an audience. Weather, scores, school closings: the unglamorous stuff is what makes you the place people already are.
No. 03·June 15, 2026·6 min read
A Hundred Years of Data
A century of records and a live read on what the whole market pays attention to. That's first-party intelligence the rest of the economy is starving for, and most publishers don't sell it at all.
No. 04·June 16, 2026·6 min read
Every Business in Town Already Knows You
You have relationships with local businesses that a software company would spend millions to fake. You're using them to sell the cheapest thing you've got.
No. 05·June 22, 2026·6 min read
Trust Is the Scarcest Thing Online
On an internet you can't believe anymore, a name people trust is what makes everything else pay. Including with the machines now deciding what's true.
No. 06·June 29, 2026·6 min read
The Competition Isn't Local
The publisher one county over was never the threat. A dollar split with a neighbor stays in local journalism. A dollar sent to the platforms never comes back.
No. 07·July 6, 2026·5 min read
The Revenue Stack
No single line saves local journalism. The durable model is a stack: habit, ads, readers, intelligence, services, verticals, events, and retention, each doing a different job.
— Field Notes, by email
One argument. Read it at your pace.
Field Notes publishes one essay a week — how local journalism gets funded, what to stop doing, what to build, and in what order. Read along as it runs, or take the whole thing at once.