Journalist Guide
How to publish on My Local Press and reach your community.
Getting Started
Whether you're a seasoned journalist or a neighbor with a story to tell, you can start publishing local news and community content 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
Your content appears in feeds based on where it's published, so readers in that community 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.
Long-Form & Podcasts
Audio and video you publish — 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 4.8. 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.
- Share your profile link — your profile has its own shareable link, which you'll find on your profile or the edit-profile screen. Put it in your social bios and anywhere people follow you, so readers can find everything you publish in one place.
- Newsletter or email list — Mailchimp or 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 so the people backing you can see what their money produced.
Earning Money
90% of every direct contribution — from friends, family, and the local businesses in your community — goes to you. They back you directly, and your share is transferred the moment their payment clears. No audience threshold, no minimum payout, no startup cost. The 90/10 split and the full price breakdown are on How Payments Work.
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 account, same split.
When an advertiser backs you with a Full or Minimal Ad, they can see how it performed — impressions, clicks, audio plays, 30-second listens. The readership you drive is what they're measuring, so Building Your Audience is how you grow it. Full detail on what advertisers see is in the Advertiser Guide.
When someone chooses to support you, they choose how visible they want to be:
- Full Ad — a real ad in the feed for their business.
- Minimal Ad — a clean credit line ("Supported by Main Street Coffee").
- Profile Support — their name on your profile, or "Anonymous" if they prefer. No feed placement.
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. Tier pricing is on How Payments Work.
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. 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 would be about $900/month, or $10,800/year, going to you. That's an illustration of how the splits stack up, not a forecast — what you earn depends on how many people back you.
How Payments Work
Tier prices, the recurring math, when payouts hit your account, and how the 10% platform fee gets used.
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