- Mainstreet Daily News reached 1,000 paying members in September, marking a significant milestone for independent local news support.
- The news outlet recently added staff including a full-time photographer and an audience growth manager with 26 years at Tampa Bay Times.
The month of September brought an important milestone for Mainstreet Daily News, when Patty Basa became our 1,000th paying member.
Wow!
We are in awe of this community’s support of independent local news. Thank you to every single one of our voluntary members who took a stand for local news and partnered with us in this work. We could not do it without you.
Members get some cool perks, but they are simply our way of saying thank you. The real value comes in knowing you are helping us build a stronger community.
And the good news does not stop with the membership milestone. As you invest in us, and our membership number grows, we have continued to return that investment in numerous ways.
Since February, we have launched a new weekly podcast called StreetSmart, a weekly column by the legendary Pat Dooley, and a weekly Gators sports newsletter called Gator Bites—just in time for Jon Sumrall to make Florida football fun again!
You can visit our Gators sports landing page to subscribe. It’s free—just like all of our other content.
We are also investing in personnel. Walker Smith, our first full-time photographer, joined our staff in July, and his work has been featured prominently online and in print since then.
This week, we’re also adding an audience growth manager. Donna Prentice comes to Mainstreet after 26 years at the Pulitzer Prize-winning Tampa Bay Times, previously the St. Petersburg Times. She led audience engagement and growth efforts there that played a pivotal role in the Times winning one of the nation’s last great newspaper wars, which ended in the acquisition of the Tampa Tribune in 2016.
These hires come amid recent invitations from the Google News Initiative and the Local Media Association to participate in labs diving into key areas of development, including AI, reader engagement and philanthropy. Each of those will help Mainstreet’s work become more sustainable, ensuring we are built to last and remain on the cutting edge of industry technology and best practices.
The end result is compelling: The Neiman Lab at Harvard University recently recognized Mainstreet as one of the most-trafficked local news websites in the country. We do not chase traffic numbers, but we are humbled by what it represents. We know that each click, each unique user, represents someone who has discovered trustworthy local news and information.
If you have not joined this mission, why not start today? This week is National Newspaper Week, so it’s a perfect time to thank a Mainstreet advertiser, share a story, forward an email newsletter, or become a member.
These things do not take long, but they do make a difference.