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.
Explore Newspack’s worldwide community using our interactive map
The Newspack community spans the globe. Want to see where our publishers are based? Open up this nifty zoomable, pannable map.
Video demos
See revenue-generation features of Newspack in action
The demonstration videos below, which are not narrated, show the initial setup of donations and advertising. Donations Advertising
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
Court tosses $25 million libel suit against Reveal
Reveal from The Center for Investigative Reporting is celebrating the end of a four-year lawsuit brought by the subject of one of the newsroom’s stories.
Google, LION release a trio of reports for early stage digital newsrooms
Leaders in journalism research produced a broad US-Canadian census of digital newsrooms and shared results of the resulting survey. They also teamed with others to create a startup playbook.
Rosenstiel on the chaos of the news business
API’s Tom Rosenstiel heralds the “dreamers” who are striving to find solutions to the crisis in local news — “the problem solvers and pioneers charting new ways to live up to enduring responsibilities.” He identifies four major challenges to journalism as part of an occasional series for Poynter.
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.
Newspack News
Voice of OC is making the most of Sunshine Week
Voice of OC in California went all out for Sunshine Week, changing its branding to Noise of OC and highlighting their successes in shining a light on government.
Mission Local reporter named top emerging journalist; Black Voice News featured in renaissance piece
Julian Mark, a staff writer with Mission Local, has been named the outstanding emerging journalist for 2020 by SPJ of Northern California.
Black Voice News publisher Paulette Brown-Hinds was the featured subject of a story about the renaissance of the Black press, appearing on the Report for America website.
Subscription and membership focus of new Facebook accelerator
Building on its successes in previous years, the Facebook Accelerator program is accepting applications for another round, with a March 19 deadline. The program is open to U.S. and Canadian newsrooms, either for-profit or nonprofit.
Applications open in March for $20K grants to upgrade CMS, boost sustainability
Grants of up to $20,000 to support newsroom technology improvements soon will be made available to U.S.-based newsrooms that are nonprofit or work to inform underserved communities.
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.
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.