WordPress for News Organizations
Newspack, a project of WordPress.com and the Google News Initiative, is an advanced open-source publishing and revenue-generating platform for news organizations.
Newspack explained
Newspack is an all-in-one publishing platform that incorporates industry best practices to help small and medium-sized news organizations produce great journalism, drive audience, and generate revenue.
Newspack has an ever-growing community of newsrooms on the platform. Check out the list.
Video demos
Newspack tools show flexibility and speed of homepage design
This video from Laurel Fulford of the Newspack development team demonstrates how the new platform adds to WordPress’s block editor to give newsrooms a range of options for showcasing their work.
See revenue-generation features of Newspack in action
The Newspack team has hit another development milestone on time with the completion of the tools needed to set up donations/subscriptions and advertising. The charter newsrooms that are guiding the development of Newspack are still on course to launch by mid-October.
How Newspack is put together
Check out the various components that have been integrated into Newspack over the past year, from authoring tools, to ad managers, to membership and subscription features. You’ll find them on our Support page.
Industry News
Poynter: The money in not-for-profit news
Rick Edmonds, Poynter’s resident news-business analyst, takes a look at the money flowing into various not-for-profit local news ventures and concludes that “big nonprofit local initiatives are thriving and on track for healthy growth this year.”
Times raises $4m for non-profit journalism venture
The New York Times has raised $4 million for a philanthropy backed journalism initiative called Headway that will go beyond the daily news cycle to produce “deeply researched, visually ambitious, data-rich projects” on major economic, social, and environmental issues. You might ask, isn’t this what The Times already does? Yes, but in this case the […]
Basking in national success, Axios is poised to go local with morning newsletters
Axios is set to bring in $58 million in revenue this year, up 30 percent compared with 2019, The Wall Street Journal reports, and they’re looking to expand their news-in-brief style to local markets.
Google News Initiative unveils a Journalist Studio to help gather, display info
Google’s $300 million commitment to news this week added new tools for journalists, adding to its direct cash support and training for newsrooms over the past two years.
Membership grants target newsrooms outside of U.S. and Western Europe
The Luminate Group, working through the Membership Puzzle Project, is offering up to $40,000 to help newsrooms build “strong and flexible relationships” with their audience, with the goal of boosting sustainability.
Mountain State Spotlight launches as a watchdog for West Virginia
As of September 17, Newspack’s newest site is Mountain State Spotlight, a new publication founded to provide excellent investigative journalism for America’s thirty-fifth state. Yesterday, Nieman Lab covered the publication’s launch and talked to its founders about what inspired them to join forces to build a new nonprofit newsroom for West Virginia.
Google, LION partner to help launch 24 local news startups
Two dozen early- or idea-stage publishing projects in the U.S. and Canada will get free, expert advice on honing their business plans, engaging with their audiences and reaching financial sustainability as part of an effort announced this week by the Google News Initiative and LION Publishers.
Newspack News
European publishers invited to apply for half-price Newspack discount
With 27 sites launched and 50 more preparing to go live, Newspack is picking up speed. But we want to move even faster, so we’re now offering a half-price discount for three months to the first 25 European newsrooms that are accepted into our subscription plan before November. A project of Automattic, the parent company […]
Newspack offers free plugin that builds a Mailchimp newsletter without leaving WordPress
Newsletter editors who copy-and-paste between WordPress and Mailchimp can get some time back in their day by using the Newspack Newsletter plugin now available free to anyone.
In researching pain points of online news publishers, many cited the hassle of switching from app to app to app to get things done. This plugin lets an editor use the familiar Gutenberg bock editing tools to more quickly build out a newsletter, all from the friendly confines of WordPress.
Survey of Newspack customers finds broad approval
A survey of the initial group of pilot partners who helped lead the development of Newspack has found that pilot participants and Newspack team members alike “were very happy with the process.”
The survey, conducted by analysts from News Revenue Hub, was submitted on Friday to the Knight Foundation, which provided funding for NRH to help guide development of the platform in the first year.
Newspack publishers earn share of $16 million Covid-19 relief package
Thirteen newsrooms in the Newspack program were awarded a total of more than $1 million as part of Facebook Journalism Program’s relief effort for local news due to Covid-19.
Newsletters in the age of coronavirus
The Newspack team has assembled an email newsletter playbook to help news organizations deepen their relationship with their audience at a time of unprecedented demand for local news.
Hong Kong Free Press relaunches on Newspack
Tom Grundy, editor-in-chief of the Hong Kong Free Press gives a shout-out to the NewsPack team on the occasion of their launch on the Newspack platform.
Our first annual conference and a Newspack primer
The Newspack team brought participating publishers together for the first time last November for a two-day deep dive on the current capabilities and future vision for Newspack. Our chief correspondent, Steve Beatty, wrote an exhaustive account of the meeting, which is a great primer for anyone seriously considering switching to Newspack.
More about Newspack
Newspack draws on the power of WordPress and years of industry expertise to deliver a handcrafted solution that helps small and medium-sized news sites build audience and revenue in the digital era. More than 50 sites have signed on in the first year. Check out the latest features and review our pricing and terms of service.