30A tops the 2015 list — known as “Michele’s List,” named after its founder — which was compiled during a nationwide study of more than 90 community news sites nationwide. Lauren Sage Reinlie, who took over as editor of 30A.com last fall, was thrilled with the news.
Lauren Sage Reinlie
“We are helping to lead the way in online community news, serving our community in ways other digital models haven’t been able to,” she said. “It’s exciting to be at the cutting edge of a new age of local, independent news.”
The numbers were encouraging to Tom Grubisich, “The New News” columnist for Street Fight magazine, but with 30A.com the only site on the list reaching over $1 million, he said the digital realm still has a long way to go.
“Local news is struggling to reinvent itself for these digital times, and, overall, it has indeed been a struggle, as the numbers in the new ‘Michele’s List’ shows,” said Grubisich. “Many entrepreneurial would-be publishers have plunged into the digital space, but not that many, unlike 30a.com, understand how they need to innovate in connecting with their communities in these new circumstances, where residents are no longer passive, single-source consumers of news.”
Read Street Fight’s full analysis of the numbers.
