Instead, readers find articles that help them become better citizens.
Subscribers to the Kansas City newsletter can, for example, learn more about the city’s famous 12th Street, or how to make their voices heard on city planning through the GO KC Sidewalk programme.
This formula of providing practical information seems to have found its audience since the newsletter is read by more than 82,000 people every day.
The residents of Missouri’s largest city aren’t the only ones paying close attention to 6AM City’s 24 local newsletters.
The start-up claims to count more than a million subscribers, which would make it one of the fastest growing newsletter platforms.
And it has no plans to stop there. 6AM City aims to cover local news in 30 US cities by the end of 2022, and to reach US$10 million in revenue.
The impressive success of 6AM City is emblematic of the newsletter’s comeback in the media ecosystem.
Once perceived as outdated, this format is now proving to be strategic for creating and maintaining a link with readers. The proof is in the pudding with Substack.
The self-publishing platform, founded in 2017, keeps seeing its number of paying subscribers grow. It even passed the symbolic threshold of one million last November.
Fighting against media deserts
For Ryan Heafy, co-founder and COO of 6AM City, 6AM City’s success is mostly due to its service-oriented editorial line.
“We’re designed to be kind of like a marketing engine for the cities,” he explained during the Media Voices podcast, “curating the best of what’s going on there about how you can become a better, more engaged and involved citizen, whether that means telling you quickly how you can join boards, non-profits, participate in charity events, or where to go have a cocktail on a patio in downtown.”
This approach allows the startup’s newsletters to reach a broader readership, away from the Democrat-Republican divide.
“That keeps us with a larger addressable market, and allows us to open up people’s eyes more effectively on how to be better citizens, and the communities that they live in,” Heafy emphasised in the Media Voices podcast.
6AM City also has another ambition: to find a viable business model for local American media.
There is a pressing need in this area: since 2004, more than 2,100 regional press titles have disappeared, according to researchers at the University of North Carolina. A phenomenon that is contributing to the emergence of media deserts throughout the country.
But Ryan Johnston, CEO of 6AM City, remains confident.
“We spent the past six years perfecting a highly scalable model for creating and growing our hyper-local newsletters in cities large and small,” he stated in a press release.
“Hitting 1 million subscribers is validation that we are providing value and filling a gap in our local markets.”