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Hello! I’m stoked to share big news today. But before that, I’ll answer one of the most common questions about local newsletters 👇️ 

What should my local newsletter cover?

When I first started my local newsletter, I asked the same question about every potential story:

Does the average resident of Annapolis care about this?

Yes? Include it. No? Don’t. On the fence? Don’t. Very simple. But later I developed a new question.

Does Michelle care about this?

Who’s Michelle? She’s my newsletter avatar. By running surveys and meeting readers, I figured out my prototypical reader is over 50 years old, female, and affluent.

Show owns her home. She has a few older kids who went to our local private school. Her and her husband may be members at the yacht club. She probably eats out at least once a week. I could go on but I won’t.

That doesn’t mean we don’t have men and younger women reading. We do. But if I could only write for one person, it’s Michelle. She makes up the bulk of my audience. And if Michelle cares about something, there’s a good chance everyone else does too.

But that still doesn’t answer the main question: What do I cover? Read on, my friend.

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My local newsletter has 7 sections:

• General news

• Business news

• Events

• Government news

• Weather

• Live music calendar

• Sports

Most of those are self-explanatory except general news. That’s where I put stuff that needs to be included but doesn’t fit anywhere else. General news this week has included:

• The school system not providing laptops anymore

• Super Bowl fundraiser that raised $8k for a local nonprofit

• Our Black history museum getting a new name

• Cool cleanup plan for our local rivers

You can tell what everything else is by its name. Business news is for new restaurants and stuff. Government news is for city and county council meetings. There’s just one notable thing we don’t cover.

Unless it’s such a major crime that we can’t ignore it, my local newsletter doesn’t include crime. I set out to be the polar opposite of sensational. I set out to show off how great of a place our town is. To tell people about cool events, live music at bars, and highlight our local business scene.

We could definitely cover more. I don’t do any high school sports at the moment. I don’t include the cheapest gas prices or jobs or anything about real estate; people love real estate.

The most important thing is that you set a format and stick to it. Our sections are in the same order every day. The only exception is for big news, we may bump it up to the general news section regardless of category. If it’s super huge news, I’ll make it a special section above the first ad – our equivalent of a front page story.

The big news

Do you want to start a local newsletter but don’t know where to start? I’m making something just for you. It’s called the 5-Day Local Newsletter Starter Kit. It covers everything from naming your newsletter to sourcing content to getting your first subscribers and sending the first email. It’s not quite finished yet, but I’m opening pre-orders today.

I’m also offering a special intro price for this week only. If you don’t know where to start, start here.

Life of Scoop’s new referral program

If you share Life of Scoop, I’ll reward you.

• Get 2 folks to join and I’ll send you a PDF of all the tools I use to run my local newsletter.

• Get 15 and I’ll evaluate a writing sample and tell you how to improve.

• Get 100 and I’ll give you a free hour of local newsletter consulting ($350 value).

• And if you somehow get 1,000 I will fly you out to my newsletter’s annual party, put you up in a hotel, and make you the guest of honor.

Life of Scoop stuff

• I do local newsletter consulting. Schedule that here.

• You can sponsor this newsletter (517 hungry entrepreneurs, 75% open rate). Email me to get up in here.