Journalist Guide
Everything you need to know about publishing content on My Local Press and reaching your community.
Getting Started
My Local Press makes it easy to start publishing local news and community content. Whether you're a seasoned journalist or a community member with stories to tell, you can start sharing in minutes.
For a step-by-step setup walkthrough, see the Journalist Quick Start.
- Create an account and verify your identity
- Set up your profile with your Primary Contributing Location
- Start creating content - stories, classifieds, or podcasts
- Publish to your community and start building your audience
Understanding Location
Location is at the heart of My Local Press. Your content appears in feeds based on where it was published, so readers in that community can find it.
Setting Your Primary Location
Your home base — the community you regularly cover. Set it in your profile settings.
- Pick the community hub, not your home address. Choose a central point like the town center or city hall, and drop a pin with the map picker.
- Why it matters. Your Primary Location is the default community your work shows up in. If you live 20 miles outside a small town but cover that town, set Primary to the town center so your stories land in that town's feed.
- One change per month. Keeps coverage authentic and prevents misuse.
Choosing where this story appears
When you publish, you pick one of three locations for the story:
- Area — your approximate location, detected from your connection. No permission prompt, but it can be off by a few miles. Good enough for most stories.
- Precise — your exact GPS location. Tap once to grant permission. Use this when you're reporting from the scene or covering an event at a specific address.
- Primary — the community you set in your profile. Use this when you're traveling but still writing for your home community.
What readers see: a place name like "Santa Fe, NM" — or a specific address if you used Precise. Your raw coordinates are never published.
Reading vs. Location Discovery
Your readers always see all your content regardless of location. Location only affects how new readers discover your work when browsing their local area. If someone follows you or your publication, they'll see everything you publish in their Reading feed.
Publishing Content
My Local Press supports nine types of content, each designed for a different way to contribute to your community:
Stories
News articles, features, opinion pieces, and community updates. Add photos and videos to bring your stories to life.
Broadcasts
Audio and video content — podcasts, interviews, discussions, and local commentary.
Advertisements
Support local journalism by offering to advertise, or request ad support from businesses and readers in your community.
Classifieds
Local listings for jobs, items for sale, services, and community announcements.
Resources
Guides, directories, and reference material that helps your community — from emergency contacts to local service guides.
Events
Local happenings — town halls, festivals, fundraisers, meetings, and anything your community should know about.
Coupons
Deals and offers from local businesses — a way for the community to support and discover what's nearby.
Initiatives
Community-driven proposals for collective action — polls, petitions, discussions, and votes on issues that matter locally.
Spotlights
Requests from readers for local coverage — ask journalists to report on a meeting, investigate an issue, or cover a story that needs attention.
Using AI
My Local Press includes an AI writing assistant powered by Anthropic's Claude Opus 4.7. We encourage using AI as a tool to help with your work — but the journalism is yours.
AI-Assisted Writing
Using AI to help outline, draft, or refine your writing is fine. But you are responsible for fact-checking everything you publish. AI is a collaborator, not a source — treat its output the same way you'd treat an unverified tip.
AI-Generated Media
AI-generated images, video, and audio must never be used to depict something real that didn't happen. A fabricated photo of a public official, a doctored video of an event, synthetic audio presented as a real recording — these are prohibited.
AI-generated visuals used for creative or illustrative purposes — artwork, graphics, visual storytelling that isn't pretending to be documentary — are welcome.
Building Your Audience
We provide the platform. You bring the audience. The journalists who do well here treat their work as a small business — using every channel they already have to drive readers to their stories.
Use the network you already have
Most journalists already have an audience somewhere — an email list, a newsletter, a social following, a group chat of regulars, an email signature people see every day. Point all of it at the work you publish here.
- Newsletter or email list — Mailchimp, Substack, ConvertKit, plain email — when you publish a story, send the link.
- Social media — Facebook, Instagram, X, Bluesky, LinkedIn, TikTok. Wherever your community already follows you, share the story.
- Email signature — link to your latest piece or your profile. Every email you send is a quiet promotion.
- Word of mouth — the local coffee shop, the regulars at the meeting you covered, the people who told you about the story in the first place. Tell them when it's published.
- Cross-promote with peers — other journalists, other publications, other community contributors. Small networks compound.
Be the kind of writer worth following
- Be consistent. Regular publishing builds an audience that comes back.
- Cover what matters. Stories that affect your community directly. Specifics over abstractions.
- Engage with readers. Respond to comments. Build relationships.
- Create an organization. Group your work under a publication name to build brand recognition over time.
Why this matters for income. Every reader you bring to the platform reads, clicks, and listens. Those are the metrics your advertisers see — the ones that justify their next month of support and convince new advertisers to back you. Driving readership is the work. The platform measures it honestly so the people backing you can see what their money produced.
Earning Money
Your profile is shareable. Send the link to friends, family, neighbors, and the local businesses in your community, and they can back you directly — 90% of what they spend lands in your Stripe account, transferred the moment their payment clears. No audience threshold, no minimum payout, no startup cost.
The same model works for any publication or organization you've created on My Local Press. Backers can support the entity directly — 90% goes to the entity's Stripe account, same split.
One thing to know upfront: when an advertiser backs you with a Full or Minimal Ad, they can see how it performed — impressions, clicks, audio plays, 30-second listens. That transparency is the deal: they put money behind your work, you give them an honest look at what their support produced. The readership you drive is exactly what they're measuring, which is why Building Your Audience isn't a soft skill — it's the work. Full detail on what advertisers see lives in the Advertiser Guide.
When someone lands on your profile, they choose how visible they want to be:
- Full Ad — a real ad in the feed for their business. From $49/month for local reach.
- Minimal Ad — a clean credit line ("Supported by Main Street Coffee"). From $33/month for local reach.
- Profile Support — their name on your profile, or "Anonymous" if they prefer. No feed placement. From $20/month, anywhere.
Every tier can be one-time or recurring monthly. The Profile tier is the natural ask for family and friends who just want to back the work — it doesn't feel like buying an ad, and they can stay anonymous.
What this can look like
Local brewery — Full Ad, $200/month
They want measurable visibility in the community they pour beer into. You receive $180/month — that's $2,160/year from one supporter.
Local nonprofit — Minimal Ad, $100/month
A clean "Supported by …" credit line in your stories. You receive $90/month — that's $1,080/year per nonprofit.
Aunt Sue — Profile Support, $50/month
Her name on your profile (or "Anonymous" if she'd rather — just an example, not that she'd rather ;). You receive $45/month — that's $540/year per supporter.
A modest mix adds up.
One brewery at Full, two nonprofits at Minimal, a dozen friends and family at Profile — that's about $900/month, or $10,800/year, going to you. And that's just direct support. It doesn't count what My Local Press pays from advertisers who back the platform's mission rather than a specific journalist or publication.
How Payments Work
Tier prices, the recurring math, when payouts hit your Stripe account, and how the 10% platform fee gets used.