Ken Doctor offers actionable ideas from Lookout Local’s success
By Cecilia Campbell
What makes the Lookout model – “a good community newspaper that happens to be digital” – tick and what differentiates it from the hundreds of startups proliferating across the United States?
Integrated tech stack, diversified revenue models, deep school programs and thorough community engagement – all supporting one another – have made a difference, as do the very non-remote, in-person downtown-based operations.
Background: building a community newspaper that is more – and digital
The original Lookout Local site, Lookout Santa Cruz launched in November 2020.
Ken Doctor had been a consultant to the news industry for many years, and was getting to the point where he was itching to prove that it was possible to launch a digital only local news outlet, with the traditional newspaper’s role of being a hub for the local community, while leveraging and benefiting from everything it means to be digital – including no legacy overheads, and being able to reach people in so many more ways, including through newsletters, multi-media, apps etc, while keeping a sharp focus on showing up in and for the local community.
Thanks to the ground work done in Santa Cruz, including getting the tech stack up and running smoothly, the launch of the second site, Lookout Eugene-Springfield, on 10 April this year, has seen a ramp-up 3–5 times faster than for Santa Cruz. (Numbers in slide below)
The Lookout Local team plans to launch more sites by the end of 2026.
“The ability to move very quickly is one that I think is a critical differentiator for us. And having done consulting and still talking to a lot of people throughout the industry, I know the inability to move quickly has really hampered our industry across the world. We have a singular focus,” – Ken Doctor
Context – the US local news industry
The genesis of Lookout Local should be seen in the context of what is going on in the US local news industry more broadly. It’s well known that local newspapers in America have shut down at an alarming rate since the mid 00s.
Now, however there’s a trend of new, and existing local news publishers expanding into underserved communities across the country. The Google News Initiative and the Knight Ridder Foundation both support many of these, as shown on the map below.
In Eugene, Oregon, The Register-Guard was the daily paper and it was, according to Doctor, highly regarded, really the best independent paper in the state by far and one of the best in the country.
Before its sale to Gatehouse Media in 2018 (which subsequently bought Gannett and took that group’s name in 2019), The Register-Guard had 80 reporters – by 2024 that number was just six, and there’s no longer a local editor.
“What that created was both a crater of local news, a lack of local news. And also a market opportunity for us,” Doctor said.
Crucially, he noted, at Lookout Local, 75% of expenses go to staff – key for showing up for the local community.
“During my years as an industry analyst, I figured out that no more than 20% – and usually 12–15% of a newspaper company’s expenses actually went to paying people in the newsroom. While we are wholly digital in terms of publishing, being in touch with people is a huge part of our strategy,” he said.
