[upbeat music] Welcome to the Rebooting show. I am Brian Morrissey.
Today, I'm joined by Mike White, the founder of Greater Long Island, which has become, you know, a successful example of local news done right. Mike is a veteran reporter.
He cut his teeth at the New York Post and the New York Daily News before he started working for weeklies out on the Island. In two thousand and fifteen, he launched Greater Patchogue as a true one-man operation.
He was hustling out five or six stories a day. He was literally walking the beat on Main Street for leads and selling ads directly to local businesses.
And then under the banner of Greater Long Island, he's expanded into various towns in Suffolk and Nassau Counties, which for those of you who are not familiar with your Long Island geography, are the two largest counties in Long Island.
And he's bootstrapped a media business and done it organically, and I think it's because, you know, he's a guy from Long Island and it's, it's rooted in community. And his approach is really simple.
It's focus on what readers actually care about, and a lot of times that's about restaurant openings and festivals and new businesses.
And sometimes that means a backseat to some of the process-heavy coverage that, that legacy weeklies often rely on. Mike has built a business model around treating advertisers like partners.
So instead of just selling banner ads, he delivers sponsored content and regular performance updates and the kind of personal service that builds loyalty.
He's also used this to expand into new towns, like basically, you know, asking for businesses to support the expansion into, into new areas, and I think that's a really smart way of going about it.
In our conversation, we talk about what it takes to build sustainable media at a time when, you know, traditional local journalism is struggling, why, you know, his own local roots matter, and how hustle and focus can more often beat scale and, and polish when, when you're looking to build one of these brands.
Hope you enjoy the conversation. As always, love it if you can leave the Rebooting show a rating and review on Apple or Spotify. I don't think you can leave reviews on Spotify, but you can rate it there.
And send me your feedback about who you'd like to see on this show going forward. My email address is bmorrissey@therebooting.com. Now on to my conversation with Mike.
[upbeat music] All right, Mike, thanks for joining me for the podcast. Absolutely, Brian. The... It's an honor. What, what you're doing for the industry is, is really profound, I will say. Okay. Thank you. Yeah.
That is definitely, as I like to say, going into the sales kit. All right. Let's get into it. You're clearly... You know, you're not... You're undeterred because you're in, you're in the local news business.
Give me the origin story for Greater Long Island. I went to school at the University of Delaware for journalism- Mm-hmm... and got started with a little newspaper called the Cecil Whig in Elkins, Maryland. Okay.
And then- I like, I like the sounds of that. [chuckles] Yeah. And I moved to the Cayman Islands to write for a paper. That was a silly mistake. Came home, couldn't find a job. Got into Columbia Journalism School. Uh-oh.
And from there, I started stringing for the New York Post and was working for the New York Post, got recruited, recruited by the Daily News, and then made my way back to Long Island, where sort of my heart was, you know?
This was, like, in, like, what? The two thousand tens? I'm trying to gauge when. Yeah. Yeah. Mid-two thousands, I would say. Okay. Mid-two thousands.
This is before the, the bottom sort of fell out of a lot of these models. I mean, I know... I went to journalism school at Columbia- Mm.... at the- Yeah... the two thousand, right? And they were...
I always felt like, you know how generals always fight the last war? They were, like, training us for the last industry that was already sort of going away.
They were, like, training us to get, you know, jobs at, at local papers and then work your way up, and then, you know, after s- after many years of toiling, you get a shot at, like, a Newsday, I guess- Mm-hmm...
you know, at the time. You're right. And then, then maybe from Newsday, you j- maybe you make a jump to the Post or the Daily News, et cetera. And- Yeah. That was the goal. Yeah. And that, you know, sort of went away.
So when did you decide to sort of make your own way?
Well, I, I left the Daily News to, to edit newspapers, weekly newspapers on the East End of Long Island, really, you know, top weeklies in the country, and I did that for about eight years.
And when I got there, it was sort of the old, the paper publishes on Thursday, and that's the day the stories hit the website, and then the stories sit there for a week until the next paper comes out. Yeah.
And myself and a team of talented editors and reporters, many of them are still in the industry, people with Daily aspirations, sort of turned it into m- of more...
You know, we started publishing stories when they were ready, publishing stories in real time.
If there was breaking news, we'd send a reporter and have the reporter dump the information to me or someone else and publish.
So we really started transforming it into, like, a daily operation, which at the time was pretty new f- to a weekly. Mm-hmm. And, but all this time we had...
I would see the analytics in the back end, and d- I just was inadvertently, accidentally collecting all this data of what people wanted to read. Yeah.
And the newsroom, we'd go into our budget meetings, "Okay, so and so, what are you doing this week?"
"Well, Tuesday night I have school board for this district, and Wednesday I have village board for this, and Thursday I have school board, Friday is school board. There's a work session meeting this day."
And it was like everyone's going to these meetings, but no one's... And it's a ton of hours being spent covering these things- Mm-hmm... and no one was reading it. Yeah. It wasn't, it wasn't focused on outcomes.
I think that's a lot of where... I think there's a culture of journalism that sprung up over the years- Mm-hmm...
of sort of not being outcomes focused, 'cause that would sort of sully the work, but there's downsides to that.I mean, the same stories would get published every week, like, with an update, and the same amount of people didn't care about it.
And I'm not saying it wasn't worthy- Right... of some sort of print, but, I mean- But you gotta be audience-focused. I mean, this is- Yeah... the whole story of what we're living through right now in- Yes...
media that I think sometimes gets obscured with all the Google Zero talk the people like me like to babble about.
But, like, really, like, a lot of these business models were not really focused on the needs of the audience. Correct, 100%. Otherwise, the market, you know, the, the, the, the... This would not be a problem if- Yeah...
you know? Like, 'cause people would be like, "Oh my God, like, my local newspaper, Newsday, is, is, is a shadow of itself. My God, this is terrible." Mm-hmm. "Like, I, I want more of this."
And, you know, the reality is, I think for a bunch of different reasons, a lot of local news sort of got away from, from that. Yeah. I think the weeklies... And, and, and we, we had big budgets for, for weeklies and...
But I think if you go around the country, a lot of the weeklies, the audience almost becomes, like, the same subjects that are in the paper every week. Yeah.
Like, pick up a weekly and you're gonna hear from the same chamber members, and they're gonna be on the cover of the paper every week.
So the audience becomes the, the county commissioner and the chamber leaders and the school district superintendents, you know, and I think that's where they sort of- Right... lose their way a little bit.
And it's not the people, it's not your neighbors. Yeah, right. Like, I mean, ultimately- Right... like, it's not that complicated. It's like, what do- Right... your neighbors need, you know, at the end- Right...
of the day. And the neighbors, like, you know, a lot of times, and I think I wanna get into that with- Mm-hmm...
with what you're doing, like, with Greater Long Island, but, like, you know, I feel like in journalism w- w- we all sort of want, love the accountability aspect of it as it is undeniably a public service.
But at the end of the day, you know, we're doing this on a Friday. Like, people need to know what to do, though, on the weekend. Mm-hmm. Like, I mean, forget about the, you know...
Like, we can get back to the crooked county commissioners, like, on Monday, but, like- Mm... we've got a weekend ahead of us, too. Right, right, right. [laughs] Right. Exactly, stay in touch, stay in touch with reality.
[laughs] Okay, so, like, what, uh, how did you decide to build this? Okay. So I was...
We had won some big awards at the National Press Association in Albany or Saratoga, I forget, and I'm driving home, and I hit a sort of ceiling at this company where I was at. There was nowhere for me to go.
And I just started to think, you know, there was an up-and-coming town next to me, a downtown that started to resemble a little city, and I said, "What if I just started my own website covering this downtown and the surrounding areas?"
Where was this? This is Patchogue, Long Island. Okay. And I, let me just run it like, you know, like a, a mini daily news, you know, uh, like, snappy, chatty writing, engaging stories.
And I told Pointer last week, a, a reporter there, I said, "There's so much talk about, like, content and creating engaging content. I mean, the tabloids figured this out over a century ago how to do all these things."
Yeah. You know? It's not, it's a, it's not a new formula, right? Yeah. Like, what is the, like, headless body found at a topless bar? Right. Like... [laughs] Yeah, this isn't sort of new. So I said, "You know what?
Let me, let me start covering this, this town and the surrounding areas, like a mini daily news."
And I had a, I had an infant, I had a toddler, so I wasn't gonna be running out to, to crashes and, and, and, and fires in the middle of the night. That wasn't an option. Okay.
And I, and I couldn't, and I wouldn't cover political races because that is such a drain on resources in a, in a local- Yeah... newsroom. And so I kinda just cut that out.
And I was a little anxious because I have a lot of friends in the industry, and I didn't know what they were gonna think. Like, "Oh, so you wr- you're writing feelgood?" You know, like, "This is not- Yeah, yeah, yeah...
what journalism's about." Service journalism and, and- Yeah... quotes are doing hard work and when people talk about service journalism. Right, right. And you know what? You know what, Brian? That never happened.
All I got was such compliments and accolades and it was amazing. And, and so really I- But accolades from whom? Like, from the audience? From people in the... Well, certainly from the aud- audience. Yeah. A lot.
I mean, this was just a hit. But even in the journalism community- Okay... where I thought I might, you know- Be excommunicated for not just- Be excommunicated... doing fires and- Right... the crook and- And, and-...
the dog catcher and whatnot. Right. Yes, no. So even, even people in the industry really, really liked it. So you started on more, like, service side, basically, at the end of the day. Yeah, it was...
You know, when you strip away the crime and the, you know, the breaking news and the politics, it's a lot of, like, fun, you know, things happening on Main Street, photos at, like, summer festivals, really well-packaged and published stories about businesses that are opening on Main Street.
Some village board stuff, town board, environmental, and, and, and other sort of business stories, but mainly restaurants. I mean, restaurants was just, like- Yeah... blowing it up for me, you know.
Um- And this is in s- this was originally in Suffolk, or? That's in Suffolk. Okay. It was called GreaterPatchogue.com back in- Yeah... 2015. And people would ask, like, "Well, what do you do exactly?"
Like, and I would say, "I write stories that people wanna like and share on Facebook. That's what I do." Yeah. It's not that complicated. Yeah. I mean, at the time, like, that made a lot of sense, right? Right.
And a lot of this is, almost feels dated, [laughs] right? Yeah, I know. [laughs] So it's hard to, like, talk about this without- But, I mean, look... oh, duh... you, you were starting this without, you know...
It, it wasn't like you had Sequoia or A16Z funding- Mm-hmm... funding this operation, right? And- No...
you know, I always think, you know, media at the end of the day, no matter what business you're in, it's what you're gonna make, how you're gonna distribute it, and then how you're gonna make money off it.
And, you know, you, you got what you're gonna make because the reality is if you're gonna start without a billionaire backing you or without some foundation or nonprofit, you gotta go to where...
Y- you gotta operate within the market. And the market- Yeah... is gonna go more towards the, quote-unquote, "service journalism", what are, what are the good restaurants to go.
And then, you know, the distribution, particularly at the time-It, you know, that, that's where you go. Facebook is a great distribution for local. Yeah, and, and at first it was like 80% Facebook traffic. Yeah.
And then that always made me uncomfortable because even at the time Facebook was trying to push us publishers to like publish directly to Facebook. I don't know if you remember that.
And they were gonna give you 50%- Instant articles?... 70... Instant articles, yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That was- Yeah. I just- In the many rackets that publi- Yes... that platforms ran. [laughs] Many rackets.
And I said, they're like, "We'll give you 70% of the local ads." You know, and I, and at any moment that could turn into 30% and 20% will be gone, which it did. And, you know, it's been a love hate.
I always say, not to be crude, but I always say Facebook is like your best friend who's like trying to sleep with your girlfriend. Okay.
That could've gotten even- [laughs] That could've been even cruder, so I didn't know which direction [laughs] you were gonna go. That's fine. [laughs] I hear a lot worse, Mike, with my discussions with publishers.
[laughs] Right. So I didn't go for that. It was all sort of, you know, local ads, and that, that took a while to get up to steam. But yeah, so it was mostly- But it was just you. It was just you writing it. Just me.
Just me. It was like a solo operation, which I can, I can appreciate. Yeah.
I'd wake up in the morning, I'd go to the coffee shop, I'd walk around Main Street, I'd drive around to story leads and go back to the coffee shop, write, publish five, six stories a day, and it was just, it was a sensation.
It really was a sensation. Yeah. I mean, but the pace had to be, I mean, you were doing this daily. You know, I just, th- it's in my blood, I guess. Having worked at the Post and the Daily News- Yeah...
and then having turned those weekly operations, not myself, my team, into like a daily operation, I've never stopped doing this since I graduated from college.
Okay, so you- So it was just- You got that- Even the Newsday- You got that dog in you, as they say. [laughs] Yeah, the dog. Right, right.
Even the N- the Newsday reporter who I would see at village board was like, "You're gonna burn out, you know?" And he's like, "Come work for Newsday. You're gonna burn out."
I'm like, "I'm not gonna burn out, this" You- I just know myself. This is- Yeah... burning out is not [laughs] going to happen. Okay, so you- I might go broke. Yeah, [laughs] exactly. So you started in, in, in Patchogue.
And for those who don't know, I mean, give like a quick, this would be a good like sort of- Yeah... interlude to give, you know, a little Long Islandology to people who are not steeped in Long Island.
'Cause it's a, it's an interesting... Yeah, I've never lived in Long Island, but I've, I've, I've sort of circled around it like m- Mm-hmm...
my entire adult life 'cause I went to college, most, seemingly like half my college was from Long Island. Yeah. Like a lot of people who went to Chappaqua for some unknown reason, or Chaminade. That was it. Chaminade.
It's like every third- Yeah... every third guy went to Chaminade. [laughs] Yeah. And then like obviously, you know, living in New York, you know, Long, Long Island's immense large.
And it's like I don't think people recognize how big Long Island is. Yeah.
It's, for one, it's, it's the largest island in the contiguous United States, and it's 100 and almost 120 miles, 116 miles long, stretches from the East River, contains Brooklyn, Queens, Nassau, and Suffolk counties.
And when people refer to Long Island, they're not typically talking about Brooklyn and Queens. That's New York City. It's technically, geographically- Yeah... it's part of Long Island. Right.
If, if you're studying the Revolutionary War, the Battle of Long Island happened in Brooklyn. Yeah. So it's technically, geographically, those, it has five, four counties rather: Queens, Kings, Suffolk, Nassau.
But when colloquially, when people, when people refer to Long Island, they're talking about Nassau and Suffolk counties east of the boroughs. Yeah. And it's, it's massive.
Population 2.8 million people, I think it would be the ninth-largest state in the country by population. Yeah. And these are rich. These are rich areas. Because I mean, like there's two coun- Yeah...
like I think they're in the like top 10 of, you know, the richest counties in America. Some of the wealthiest zip codes.
I mean, some of them, I mean, like, it's always weird with New York because like quote unquote "rich" like in the glob- in the, 'cause certainly in the global context, but even in a national context [laughs] here is like relative- Mm-hmm...
because of how expensive everything is around New York City. Yeah. Yeah. That, that's, it's, it's diverse. I would say it's certainly diverse financially, racially, ethnically.
It does contain some of the wealthiest zip codes in the United States, especially on the North Shore, Nassau County, and, and out east in the Hamptons. Very working class on the South Shore.
Little more upper middle class on the North Shore. But it's scattered. Yeah. And politically, it, if, it would be a swing state for sure. Yeah.
'Cause there's like, you know, the Republicans always had a, a stronghold in, in comparatively to the city in- Certainly compared to New York City... in Long Island. Yeah.
It's- I mean- I think people think of it as like a red state sort of. Yeah.
[laughs] But I, I believe it is slightly- I mean, I wanna get into my Long Island Hall of Fame later, but I mean, A- Alphonse D'Amato is in my like- [laughs]... you know, Long Island Hall of Fame. [laughs] That's great.
That's great. You're dating yourself. [laughs] Well, I go with classic Long Islanders. [laughs] Uh, Joey Buttafuoco. Exactly. [laughs] It's also a first ballot.
[laughs] So yeah, so it, it would be a swing state, which us never getting into politics really, the political races we couldn't do. I mean, there's 120 school districts. There's state governments.
There's layers of governments. I think Nassau County has like 200 governments down to every lighting district- Yeah... and sewer district. Well, that would be the only thing you would be doing. Yeah, absolutely.
And even then you couldn't. And I think like figuring out the lane and where you're gonna be able to differentiate is, you know, incredibly important. Yeah.
Yeah, that, that wasn't really an option between the school races, the state, the county, the towns, the villages, the federal, uh, congressional races. That was never something we could do.
We did not have the resources, but it worked out because people just like love it. And I think for our audience, like when Trump was in Nassau County, so we covered it.
If Kamala Harris was in Nassau County, we would cover it. But, you know, you do get the comments, "How dare you cover this?" Yeah, of course.
And, and you see when it's in your newsletter, you just lost 120 subscribers, uh, just for reporting that the person was here.So we, we, we don't, we don't get into races, we don't really get into politics.
We don't have political opinion pieces, and because it really, we don't have the deep pockets to sustain being hated by half of the population [laughs].
Yeah, and you have to make, like, business decisions at the end of the day. And, and I know it's, like, hard for, like, local news, right? Mm-hmm.
But, you know, I think the, the reality is you're trying to be essential to an audience, your neighbors- Right... at the end of the day. And there's lots of different ways to execute against that.
And I think sometimes for good reasons, but also I think it holds back, like, the, the accountability stuff is just, is one part of being essential to- Yeah... to a community at the end of the day.
Yeah, and, and it could evolve. I always- Yeah... sometimes things start out... I was at a conference and, and the speaker said, "The best inventions start out as toys before they get more serious."
[laughs] Oh, yeah, Chris Dixon does that. Yeah. Like, uh, the most things like start... Although some things do just start as toys and stay as toys. Yeah, yeah.
But just [laughs] to be clear, I don't know if Lububu is gonna become- [laughs]... some sort of, like, AI like [laughs] innovation. Sure. Sure. Maybe. I'm not ruling it out.
So this could ev- this could evolve and maybe, you know, we, we evolve it in a way that's on brand still because people come to expect a certain, a certain product from us.
So what is, like, d- describe it for those, like, who are not, you know, steeped in it. Like, how do you like to sort of describe the news product and how you're doing and how it's unique? Sure.
It's, it's community news. I, I would say we started out sort of competing with the weeklies, and sort of quickly emerged to, like, oh, now our chief competitors are News 12 and Newsday.
But it's un- it's not unlike Newsday. Like, picture Newsday without, like, national, international news, politics and, and, and that's what we are. [laughs] Yeah. Yeah.
[laughs] And that's the thing, I think for people who do not know, Newsday was a formidable newspaper. Oh, rich, too.
And, you know, again, that's why it's, it's, these markets can support, they have a history of having very ambitious and large news organizations. And, you know, Newsday has won, won Pulitzers over the years.
I remember, what was the plane crash? The G- Oh, TWA flight? The, the TWA flight. Yeah. Like, you know, I think they won, like, a, a, a Pulitzer off their, their coverage- They did... of that.
You know, because of the dynamics of local news, Newsday is not, I mean, I'm not, like, a regular Newsday consumer, but I think it's- Mm-hmm... it's safe to say Newsday is not what it used to be. Yes. Newsday was loaded.
I remember one of my professors at Columbia was a foreign correspondent for Newsday, and he said he just rolled thick wherever he went with, with aides and help and great offices.
You know, there are no, as Steve Grove had said to you the other day on your last podcast, that, you know, these, these papers would have, like, foreign correspondents, now they have no correspondents.
Newsday in the '90s I would say was, like, peaking as far as their output, and I think they're doing a great job now.
I think in the last couple years they, they, they're kind of putting out some product that I, that I thought was reminiscent of the '90s as far as quality and, and, and effort.
I think in the 2000s they had, we were having a lot of trouble and, and the 2010s, but I think they're doing great work.
I just think the da- the metro dailies need to reinvent themsel- selves quicker than, than they are. Yeah. I mean, okay, but the question is, the question is how? That's step one, yes, of course.
But, like, step two [laughs] is, like, how, how they sort of reinvent these models. And so when you're thinking about it, I mean, you started in, in Suffolk County- Mm-hmm...
and then you moved into Nassau County, and these are like, this is North Shore versus South Shore, right? This is, this is the extent of my, like, Long Island knowledge. Yeah. Yes, yes. Right?
[laughs] Like, there's, there's a, there's a cultural divide, I believe, in Long Island- Mm-hmm... between the North Shore and the South Shore. Is that fair? That's fair. Yes. That's fair. Okay.
I don't know the nuances of it. [laughs] If you could quickly describe the... [laughs] Well, I think it was Billy Joel, famous Long Islander, who said you could- Another first ballot.
He said you could either date a rich girl from the North Shore or a cool girl from the South Shore. [laughs] Okay. That should sum it up. [laughs] Okay. That's fair.
I, I spent some time in Port Washington in Nassau County. Oh, yeah. I had some great friends there. I, I understand that. Yeah. I had some great friends in Port Washington.
But yeah, as, as you said earlier with college, everyone seemed to come from Long Island. When I was at Delaware people would say, "What, is everyone from Long Island?" I would say, "There's, there's three million of us.
We have to go somewhere, so" [laughs] Exactly. [laughs] You leave the island for college. So you expanded into the North Shore with, with Nassau, and that makes it, obviously it, it, it widens the market. Yeah.
So I mean, your core, let's leave the audience- Mm-hmm... aside, right? But your core customer base are local businesses? Yes. So we expanded.
We had Greater Patchogue, and then someone's cousin owns restaurants in Bayshore. "We need something like this in Bayshore." Then we start Greater Bayshore, at the time just me.
Then other people know people in Port Jefferson. "Come to Port Jefferson, please." So then we did that, and I had all these little sub-sites, Bayshore, Babylon, Port Jefferson, Patchogue.
At some point, I, we decided, I, I took on a partner, Nick Esposito, who was freelancing for News 12 at the time as a reporter. Yeah.
Took him on as a partner because I couldn't really afford to pay him what he could make elsewhere. And then from there, we expanded rapidly across the entire island. So now we're just a legitimate regional news outlet.
And the, and it's- Was that always the plan? No. 'Cause it sounds like you were going, like, hyper local. I mean, you always make it up in the, in, in, you know, in retrospect.
You're like, "Yes, of course, it was always the plan." [laughs] I was like, you know, this master plan. [laughs] Yes. And of course it's like 90% of the time it's made up on the fly. Oh, yeah. It i- that's true.
But it sounds like you were going down, like, a hyper local sort of path. Yes. Which I think makes sense. Yeah.
So it's still, the, the, the site's divided into, even though it's greaterlongisland.com, it's, you have, our categories, what we call sub-sites, which doesn't make sense, but for nomenclature town sites, we still have a Greater Patchogue, a Greater Port Jefferson.
So you can go to that for your local, your hyper, hyper local news still. So it's like hyper local, regional.Yeah.
It's hard to describe, but it's certainly a regional news outlet is probably the best way to describe, and the region is Long Island. But yeah, so we, we expanded across the island and stretched ourselves a little thin.
And during this whole time, I'm not making... I probably could have made more money if I just stuck doing Greater Patchogue.
But it was just hard because it's not, it's not on an island, the Patchogue and the surrounding areas. Everyone's connected, giving you leads from other part of the, parts of the island.
One of my bigger initial supporters was part of a regional hospital system, and, "Oh, we'd like to also... Do you have a Port Jeff site we could advertise there?" "Uh, no, I don't have a Port Jeff site."
So I'm leaving money on the table now. So to, to expand- Well, that's also a good way to like, to, to fund expansion, right? Yeah. That's what we do. Like when you- Yeah. Yeah.
So we would, before we went into a, a town, when I first started, I had no support financially from advertisers, and no one would buy an ad until the site was live. They wanted to see what it was, obviously.
So but, but as we moved forward, I would try to line up a couple, couple advertisers before I'd open in a market.
And then eventually we just put the, the cart before the horse and just went island-wide and, and took it from there. Yeah. So yeah. And the model, and the model is, is mostly advertising, right?
So we make, so we have programmatic ads through Raptive that we make good money on. Mm. Then we have town site sponsors.
So we charge up to $2,500 a month for a business to sponsor a town, and then we take a large chunk of that money and, and pump that into freelancers and our own work internally to, to deliver the page views and the impressions to their sponsorship the best we can.
And- Okay. So either way, that's interesting. Yeah. So you kinda do almost like a built if sold model. I think that's what that- Okay... that's usually what they call it. Gotcha.
Like, you know, where people go out to the market and be like, "If you buy this, we'll build it." Right. Or it's built if bought, I guess. Depends on how you look at it. Yeah.
So it's, at this point, they're all built, and then we try to shop them. Okay.
So depending on how much traffic comes to Greater Rockville Centre, that's what, you know, we'll charge that, what we feel that traffic is worth. And some areas we get a lot more traffic.
It just, you know, more of our legacy areas where we have a built-in audience.
And then we have sponsor content packages where we come out, we take photos, we write, and then we distribute ac- you know, across the island. And this is all recurring income. We don't really like to do one-off things.
Okay. So that's interesting. So I mean, to, in order to be able to...
'Cause I think one of the challenges of all local news and just news and media in general is, how do you do stuff that giant technology platforms are not doing- Mm... already? Yeah. They're pretty good at targeting.
They're pretty good at it. Mm. And, you know, the local news was always supported by being a quasi-monopoly at the end of the day. Right.
I mean, if you wanted to reach a local, if you wanted to reach, you know, people on Long Island, you know, Newsday was an incredibly efficient, and not only efficient, but it was, like, almost the only op- Yeah...
one of the few options that you had- Yeah... really. So I think that's always a question because, you know, Google and Facebook are pretty good at that. And that's what we did find.
I never wanted to try to sell the site, like, support local. It just doesn't work. Yeah. Especially on Main Street. You know, these people are, you know, just scraping by. They're like, "Yeah, support local.
Support my pizza place too." Yeah, yeah, yeah. [laughs] Like, I get it. Yeah. But, like, I gotta sell pizzas. [laughs] So, so we always wanted to build...
The goal was always to, like, to show some metrics that were right there with, with what you could get- Sure... Facebook spend or Google.
And i- you know, some industries we can't match it, and, and you really don't even wanna try to an extent with, with, with some industries. We could throw all the analytics we want to at these people.
They really don't care. They, when, when they want- Yeah... their friends to say, "Oh, I saw you on Greater Long Island," that's the retention tool. Yeah. That has real- Yeah... value, right?
I mean, the, but it can't be the only value- Correct... I guess. It's like it, that's the sort of thing, it's like... And I think a lot of times with advertising, people don't...
Like, there is an aspect of it that is beyond, like, ROI, ROAS- Mm-hmm... whatever sort of acronym you wanna throw out there. People like seeing...
There's a reason that local businesses, I grew up playing Little League and having, like- Yeah... the local, like, auto body shop- Mm-hmm [laughs]... like, logo- Yeah, yeah... on my jersey. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[laughs] You know? Like, the c- like, there was literally a team, I grew up in suburban Philadelphia- Yes... which sort of has some aspects of, like, Long- Mm...
Island to it, and there would be, like, a team that was just called Car Wash. Yeah, yeah. Like, we just knew it as Car Wash- [laughs]... 'cause they were sponsored by the car wash. I remember those days.
[laughs] There was no ROI- Right... calculation, I don't think, that the car wash did on that. Yeah, they just got press. But then again, they had everyone saying, like, "Oh, your kid's on Car Wash." [laughs] So like...
The best. Yeah, so we work hard.
Every Friday we have, we have meetings for an hour with our team, and we have health scores, and we have benchmarks, and we make sure everyone's sponsored content is reaching certain benchmarks, and then we send them alerts.
"Your story has just been read 30,000 times, 40,000 times," 240,000 times in some cases. "Hey, your, your Instagram post just reached 241,000 views."
We are constantly sending information to these people as a form of nurture and retention. So we really, the retention here is- Yeah... through the roof 'cause we work hard. We work really hard for these people.
Yeah, you gotta put in the work with... You know, it's not just like...
I think I feel like a lot of times, and I, and I see this a lot with the sort of newsletter space as, as it's, like, as it's exploded, is, you know, people love the i- and I love the idea of passive income. Mm-hmm.
I mean, I love it. Mm-hmm. That sounds amazing to me. [laughs] It's not my experience, unfortunately- Same... so far, and I don't know if I'm gonna get different experience at this point in life.
[laughs] It, generally it's not very passive. It's unfortunately active. [laughs] And you just gotta put in the work with, with, with sponsors. You can't just...
Like, it would be great if you just set up a self-serve system. People enter a credit card, you run the ad, and then you just keep, and then you just- Yeah... go on and do your thing.
Yeah, they wanna know that you're thinking about them. It's a lot of work. Yeah. You know? You could, you could show them a million impressions, two million, eight million.They don't care.
They just, they want to hear from you. They wanna know what you're doing for them, that you didn't forget about them. You could be working day and night.
And we were losing some clients, and that's where we put in our automations where they get alerts, they get milestones, they're constantly getting hit with things that we're doing through our systems. Yeah.
Because I would guess a lot of the... Like, they're used to that, right? And I think one of the- Yes... I think that's the... And it's also a differentiator.
Like, you can spend hundreds of thousands of dollars a month on, like, Facebook- Mm... and you can't talk to anyone. Yeah. You can never talk to anyone.
Like, I mean, [laughs] like- They will- Like, that's just, that's what- Mm... that's what it is when you operate at the scale that they operate. Yeah.
And I feel like a lot of media, you know, like the, the competitive advantage, you have to use the fact that you're not at that scale as an advantage. And, and that's gonna,
that's gonna basically make a lot of these businesses, if they aren't already, kind of services businesses- Mm. Yeah... at the end of the day. Absolutely. And you gotta be able to, like, provide great service. Yeah.
And then for us, our audiences, some of our sponsored content does better than an editorial content. We really try to package it all, package it all up. It's labeled sponsored, but we try to make it- Yeah...
fun and interesting and cool. Have you thought of, like, doing, do you do, like, amplification on platforms too, of the sponsored content? We set aside...
So these are monthly paying advertisers, and we, we carve off a portion of that to run meta campaigns for them as well to help, if that's what you're asking. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. 'Cause you can expand the reach.
And, like, you're doing... I mean, a lot of the value that you're delivering is beyond access to a specific- Mm... audience segment. They can, they can go into a, a meta ad manager and narrow down into people- Yeah...
whatever the zip patch are, whatever the zip codes are there, you know? But, like, you're bringing kind of like agency services to the table. Yeah. We do this for them, but also there's some media magic in it.
Whereas you could say- Mm... we have great pizza here at so and so's spot, but when it's Greater Long Island- Right... saying there's great pizza, you should try it, it's different animals. So our cost- Right...
per click and CPM is, is insanely low, like eye-poppingly low compared to what you might pay on your own Facebook page. Yeah. So it's almost like an arbitrage opportunity there- Mm-hmm...
is because they could run their own ad that wouldn't be taken as, as credibly as, you know, under the Greater Long Island brand. Yeah.
But beyond that, you also, your dollar goes further in a automated ad environment because there's higher engagement, and that's the way these systems work. Correct. Yeah. Right. That's kind of the magic. Mm. Okay.
So is, so n- there's no subscription element. Talk to me about, like, that because I think there's a lot of people who, you know, look, I get it, they, they wanna make, you know, subscription work with local. Mm.
And, like, if a community wa- really truly wants, you know, their local news to, to exist, they're gonna have to pay directly. Yeah. We have no paywall or subscription at all, and I think people just love that.
I know that the paywall is... How do I put this? It's everyone's patting themselves on the back, like the last five years, oh, paywalls, we're finally making people pay for journalism.
But that has to align with your goals, I believe. So I often say, or I've come to say as of late, like, as much as we're running a news service, we're cultivating an audience, and that can never be taken away from us.
And no matter what changes with AI, we always have this audience, and, and they kind of ride or die with us.
And if you want that audience to be a true reflection of your communities, then the paywall is tough because I think, and I don't have data to show this, but I think with the paywall, you're gonna get a certain avatar of a type of person who's willing to spend- Mm-hmm...
$43.16, $8.99 a month for, for, for local news. And, and I don't think that avatar's gonna reflect your region exactly.
So for us, as we're trying to cultivate an audience, I think that paywall would, would really run interference on that, and it pisses people off. Yeah.
Well, I mean, if you just look at the, the data, like at all, it's like 8 to 10% are gonna pay for news. Mm-hmm. And they're the same 8 to 10% who are spread across different communities- Right... nationwide. Correct.
Yeah. Right?
I, I think that's why in some ways The New York Times is a competitor to a lot of local news sites, and that just the type of person who subscribes to The New York Times is the type of person who pays for news.
And the reality is that type of person is a significant minority of the overall population in all of these communities. Right. Yeah. So that's why that w- that's something we're, we're not even considering.
Also, I think this, your story subjects, if we're supposed to be, you know...
We try to be a constructive force in the region, and part of that is, you know, we write about a business, and then when they call us a week later and say, "Oh, they sold out of this, they were packed."
I had one guy tell me, I saw him about a year after I wrote about his business. He said, "Mike, you didn't build my business, but you sure sped it up."
[laughs] And I think when you write about these people, and you're out there, and you're doing this work, and you're telling their stories, and most of the population can't read it, you're not exactly doing them a service either.
I see people who have written behind paywalls, and they have to take screenshots. And they say, "Hey, I got written up, but you can't read it. You can read it here." I don't know. Yeah.
And it's also, it's counter to the stated mission. Right. I mean, a lot of these, you know...
The, and it, it's funny 'cause it's like, well, in order to do mission-based journalism, you need direct support i, i- in the form of subscription.
But then-You're kind of working against the whole point of like what you're saying- Yeah... is that you're about. [chuckles] I think so, yeah. I didn't want to be too harsh on the paywall, but that's- Yeah. Do you do...
What, uh, what other, do you have other revenue streams or are you, I mean, like are you do- are you looking at events? I know you, you post, you know, event listings- Yeah...
and, and you do, you do those like as a fee, which is a nice revenue line. But what about, you know, Greater Long, Long Island, you know, a food fest or something like that?
Did, have you considered that or is that just like down the line? Considered it. Time is money, and we don't have much time. If you- We, we have done fun events, like we had like bartender battles.
Like, you vote online for a bracket, and then the final two meet at a local bar, and that was usually popular.
Any event we've done, we've lost money on, but gained, you know, free publicity, uh, so, so to speak, you know, gained some branding.
But I've always sat back and said, "I wish some company who just runs events for a living would come to me and say, 'Hey, we wanna use your brand. We wanna run some events. We'll give you-" Right "...
half the, the profit.'" But that day hasn't come, and I don't really have the resources to- Well-... to go for it.
All right, anyone listening out here who wants to work with Mike on a GLI like food fest or whatever, whatever. We'll- Please... bar crawl. We're, we're open to ideas. [chuckles] Yeah.
'Cause I think that's like right, and I think a lot of... I think that's changing. I get the sense, like, because I think that partnerships are going to be so important to a lot of these models- Mm-hmm...
where, you know, there's like kind of this weird thing where it's like you have people have the infrastructure to pull these things off, and then you have people who have very lean models and have a connection to an audience.
And like there's, there's obvious partnerships that can be, that can be had to create, to create new value. You just work- Yeah... out like the economics.
But the, the idea of, you know, the old model I feel like would be, okay, well then you have to build up like a big like events infrastructure- Yeah...
which I assume you don't have experience doing and probably don't have aware- or like the desire necessarily- Right. [chuckles]... to do. [laughs] And have again.
[laughs] But there are people out there that that is literally their- Yeah... you know, passion. So I think that there's something to be had there because it fits with these kind of models- Definitely...
I feel like, you know? It's very on brand. Because, yeah, and what you're able to do with the sponsor content programs is to get people to take actions- Mm-hmm...
at the end of the day, and that is, to me, the test of a media brand. Yeah. And we're coming out of this era where everyone was selling, you know, kind of fake impressions- Mm-hmm... to some degree.
And I don't mean fake as in like an ad fraud- Yeah... kind of fake, but like- Cheap...
you're arbitraging impressions that you got off of, you know, a Facebook or whatever, and you don't, some of them were only like 15 seconds and, yeah, they were sort of like empty calories. One pointers. Mm. Yeah.
[chuckles] And now the game is moving to a different area, and it's like, can you get people, one, to give a shit, and then two, to like take some kind of action? Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. That's, that's what we do.
[chuckles] And I think events is, would be the perfect fit. I've thought about it so long. I just, I would love to be like, "Here you go. Do it. I'll go there- Yeah. [chuckles]... kiss babies, shake hands- Shake hands...
and then collect a check after. You're happy, I'm happy." But yeah, so hopefully, uh, hopefully we can get that going. Hopefully someone's listening. Okay. So I gotta ask you the AI question. Yeah. Are you using it?
'Cause I think one of the questions with all of these models is how you do more with less, right? Mm-hmm.
I mean, I think the problem of, of local news was always, people would always say, "Well, who's gonna go to the, um, the school board meeting?" Right. Right? And, well, I don't know. They're on Zoom now. So I don't know.
My otter goes to all of my meetings, whether I want it- [laughs] I know it does... to go or not. So- [laughs] It really does... maybe, maybe this is a job for Otter. Mm-hmm. True. I don't know.
How are you thinking about, like, building out, like a, a lean organization that is able to be essential to the community, and do you view sort of AI as an ally in that? I, I do. Yeah. AI, AI has been- Okay...
great for us once we got the hang of it. For one, when I worked at the Cecil Whig, a little daily newspaper that I had mentioned in Maryland, my sort of job as a cub reporter was to like relight- rewrite press releases.
So I wasn't an intern, but, you know, I would rewrite press releases, and now we have, we have ChatGPT for that, and that's great. We never had a copy desk here 'cause we didn't have the, the money.
So we just had to write fast and write clean, and maybe catch a typo- Yeah... on your phone, but now we could use ChatGPT. It's a real skill these days. You know, like you can tell. [chuckles] Right.
And now we could, we could use ChatGPT as our, it's like our intern and copy desk, and it's really been a blessing because we could, we have more output.
We still know what our audience wants, so as long as we're careful and it's accurate and it's written in our style, it's really been a great thing for us. Okay. Cool.
What the future holds is, I don't know, but so much of what we do is relying on going out to places and taking photos of people and having their friends see them in the news and collecting quotes from them and then telling their stories, that, you know, that.
So we're, we're just doing what we're doing. We're just doing it at a faster clip and, you know, maybe there's proliferation of sort of like chop shop news websites that are just running AI stuff from Long Island.
But they're not gonna have the audience that we have. So we're- Yeah... really a step ahead. Yeah. And I mean, do you view, like there's, there was always, yeah, Patch always wanted to do all of these- Mm-hmm...
like community sites and, I mean, I don't think the model ever totally worked. I never thought it was gonna work even before they started. Yeah. [chuckles] Okay. I thought it was crazy.
Now you're, now I'm kinder than you are. [laughs] I thought it was crazy. I said, "Would you invest in this? This is nuts." But yeah, so- Why did you think it was crazy?
Well, I just, it was, from what I was reading, it was so much moneyAnd to do this, to be like three thousand miles wide and an inch deep, I didn't think was gonna work.
I thought, depending on the website, the town, some were really good because they've hired good editors, but some weren't. So consistency is a problem if you're trying to- Right... build a brand.
And we just see it every day. We're in the thick of things. We know how hard this is. We know how hard it is to make money.
So to just come in and think you're gonna make it rain in all these different communities, with all these different sensibilities, and all these different
various, you know, varying degrees of talent with your reporters and editors, I thought it was crazy. Yeah.
And I think that there's also, I think there's also kind of like a, maybe a softer thing of that too, of, you know, they're not of the community. Mm-hmm. I mean, you might hire someone from the community. Mm-hmm.
But I think one of the, I think one of the ways that local news kind of went wrong was, you know, everyone likes to blame private equity, probably rightly so. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
You know, is when these chains became nationalized and usually run by, like, private equity, they lost that tie to the community, and I think it's always gonna be an element of that.
I mean, you're a Long Islander, right? [laughs] Like, uh, and that, that makes a difference, you know, of having... To me, like, the, the sort of future of local is gonna be created on the local level. Mm-hmm.
More likely than, you know, I think Bridget and everyone at, like, Hearst is doing interesting things in various...
But I, I just don't think that the next models are gonna be built necessarily by the people who presided over the sort of [laughs] Yeah... disaster that, that befell, like, most of these, these local chains. Yeah.
No, I agree, and I, I even think the metros should...
Like, when we, uh, and I, I don't wanna go too back and forth or off topic or not answer your question, but, you know, 30 years ago, when, when you relied on your metro daily newspaper for national news and international news and as well as local and state, and as the budgets shrank, as you got, as n- you didn't need to go to, to the paper for the movie listings and, and whatnot, they s- kept at it, but with AP wire rips.
And if I was running a metro daily, I would say just get rid of it. Just be gone. National news, international news, out of here. There's places where people can get that information.
And just make that 40,000 circ or whatever your, your website traffic is, just make it the biggest, baddest local or state news organization you possibly could. Yeah.
So you just, like, you have a couple of full-time employees and, and a bunch of freelancers. Yes. So it's, the real core is myself and Nick Esposito, my partner. Yeah.
And Brian Harman, who actually hired me at the Daily News as our executive editor, and my wife, who's former ESPN. And then we have about 10, eight to t- eight to 12, depending on, you know- Yeah...
what people are doing in their lives, uh, freelancers, a lot of great photographers, videographers. One of our videographers was just at the Tribeca Film Festival for a film he, he co-produced.
Yeah, it's a really talented, really talented team from, from some really big newsrooms. Yeah. And are you, are you planning on, on expand...
I mean, you know, so I, how do you think about, like, sort of expanding beyond... I mean, I think you wanna keep it obviously Long Island, right?
But, like, I mean, you could do things in, I don't know, you could have a Hamptons one, like, for summer, et cetera. Yeah. So we do that.
Like, a dream scenario for me, and it could just be my life experience in newsrooms- Yeah... and it could be stupid, I don't know. I would love to have, like, one editor per three towns, right?
And, and have that editor... The same thing I just ripped on Patch for doing, I'd like to do in Long Island and carve it out into six different regions and have a little team in each region.
And just, and not expand geographically- Right... but just expand the depth and the breadth of what we offer people on a daily basis. Yeah. And have, like, a centralized infrastructure that supports all of those.
I mean, I think, like, you know, the Patch model makes a lot of sense- Mm-hmm... like, sort of as a business school sort of- Mm-hmm... exercise, I guess. [laughs] You know?
But then, like, you sort of get into the sort of lived experience that, that you have. [laughs] Yeah.
And the, a lot of times, this is a, a story repeated across many areas, the sort of business school exercise hits reality. [laughs] Right.
Yeah, I mean, everything I just described to you would have to- Reality is undefeated in those battles- Right. [laughs]... I've noticed.
[laughs] Yeah, the rea- the, the, the situation I just described to you, the dream, would have to make financial sense. It can't... What I've learned is, in this business, nothing could be a vanity. No vanity projects.
There's just no room for it. No. Before you do anything, you gotta say to yourself, "Is this gonna make us money?" And if it's not- Exactly... you move on to something else.
Okay, so final thing is I wanna go through, like, your first ballot Long Island Hall of Famers. Sure. This is across, this is... [laughs] You're, you're ready for this. [laughs] The Mount Rushmore.
This is acro- Yeah, the Mount Rushmore of Long Islanders. Go. We got Billy Joel, obviously. Yeah, we n- we, we got Billy Joel. Do we, would, we gotta throw Joey Buttafuoco up on the, on the, on the big board.
[laughs] Oh, God. I mean... [laughs] We, we could do, we could do more. There's a lot of accomplished Long Islanders. I'm trying to, I'm trying to get a nice slice of the pie that represents- Okay... everybody.
All right. I'll let you cook. Gary Bettman, NHL commissioner. Carl Yastrzemski, Hall of Famer. Sue Bird was, was considered one of the best WNBA players of all time, was from Long Island. Then we got plenty of actors.
Natalie Portman, Rosie O'Donnell, a ton of comedians. Jerry Seinfeld. Jerry Seinfeld. Let me Seinfeld on. Eddie Murphy, Billy Crystal. I don't know what it is in the water here. I can name 10 more if you let me.
I think in film you gotta go to the Baldwins. Yeah, the Baldwins. The Baldwins are Long Islanders. Yeah, Massapequa, not far from Buttafuoco. And yeah, Jerry Seinfeld, Massapequa. Massapequa is in the national news
s- once every six months, and I, I don't know how. There's always something, something about that area. But yeah, how's that? Politics. Politics has a lot, as I, I mentioned. Al D'Amato. Yeah.
Peter King might, might be in there. Yeah, Peter. I think Theodore Roosevelt was a Long Islander. Yep. Yes, he was. The Roosevelt family, started by two brothers in Queens, farmers, I believe.
And one went upstate and one went out east. And Franklin Delano Roosevelt is from the, the upstate crew, and Teddy's from Long Island, from Oyster Bay. Okay. There we go. All right. So we got the Hall of Fame. Yeah.
Good, good. This is awesome. Thank you, Mike. Thank you. It was great to talk. Absolutely. You as well. What a pleasure. [outro music]