Beyond news deserts: How Village Media is proving local journalism can still grow

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Growth starts with understanding the community

For years, the conversation around local news has centered on decline. News deserts continue to expand, newsroom staffs shrink, and many publishers wonder whether sustainable growth is still possible. But Village Media has spent more than a decade building a very different story. What began with a single digital-first community news site has grown into a network of profitable local operations by focusing on audience reach, deep community engagement and diversified advertising revenue.

Founder and CEO Jeff Elgie said the company’s beginnings were rooted in recognizing where audiences had already migrated. After acquiring SaultToday.com, he quickly realized “it was very clear that this was where the audience was going,” adding that “there had to be a business model that would work long-term.”

That early success caught the attention of Richard Gingras, former Google executive and now Village Media’s board chair. Gingras recalled first learning about the company when Elgie testified before a Canadian parliamentary committee. “He said that he was in five markets and he was profitable,” Gingras said. “My eyes lit up.” Having worked with publishers around the world, Gingras said Village Media stood out because it wasn’t trying to recreate yesterday’s newspaper business. Instead, “Jeff was looking at how the market changed,” and the company continues “looking at the environment, how people are behaving, how people are interacting with sources of information, and how do we respond to that.”

Community first, competition second

Unlike many startups that specifically target communities abandoned by legacy media, Village Media evaluates markets differently. Elgie said the company’s first question isn’t about competitors but about civic identity.

“The first thing that we look at is does the community have a sense of its own identity?” he explained. “Do the people in it care about the community and what’s going on in the community?” While demographics and commercial activity matter, he emphasized that “it really is that care, that connection to community.”

Competition, surprisingly, plays only a minor role in their market selection. “A lot of people think that Village just goes into news deserts, and that’s not at all the case,” Elgie said. “In fact, I think many news deserts today exist because the community doesn’t care about news and what’s going on in it.”

Gingras believes that focus on community identity unlocks both editorial and business success. Research consistently shows, he said, that “their information needs are proportionate to physical proximity. They want to know about the community they live in.” At the same time, local businesses are looking to reach those same audiences. As one analyst summarized the model, Gingras recalled, “You don’t ask your audience to subscribe. You ask the local businesses to subscribe because you give them access to the community and the markets they serve.”

Building journalism around reach and relevance

Village Media has intentionally built an advertising-supported model rather than relying on reader subscriptions. Elgie noted that “we are not subscription-based at all. We are reach-based and ad-supported,” making audience scale essential to both journalism and business success.

That philosophy also shapes their editorial mission. Rather than defining themselves solely as a newsroom, Elgie said, “we don’t really consider ourselves just a news organization now. We consider ourselves a community impact organization.” Service journalism comes first, covering local businesses, events, transportation, weather and government, before expanding into deeper accountability reporting. Although Village Media does not describe itself as an investigative newsroom, Elgie said they “do get into in-depth coverage of all of those types of issues at a community level.”

Supporting that journalism is a diversified revenue strategy. Roughly 70% of revenue comes from direct local advertising sales, supplemented by programmatic advertising and other revenue streams. Beyond traditional display advertising, Village Media has developed sponsored journalism initiatives, business membership programs, market research products, newsletters, proprietary advertising tools and an expanding events business. “There’s a really diverse mix of things,” Elgie said, “and now that’s growing into events.”

Think bigger than publishing

Both leaders stressed that sustainable local media requires more than producing stories.

For Gingras, success begins with understanding a community’s purpose and helping strengthen it. “What is my mission in serving this community?” he asked. Beyond informing residents, he believes publishers should help reconnect communities that have become increasingly fragmented. “What we do is not just inform, bring them together, create opportunities for them to engage,” he said, encouraging entrepreneurs to “think big, not small.”

Elgie agreed that meaningful community involvement extends well beyond daily journalism. Village Media’s charitable programs, nonprofit partnerships and local initiatives are designed to embed the company into the communities it serves. “The more deeply we are embedded in the communities, the better that we do,” he said. “We drive audience that way, we drive commercial relationships that way.”

Still, neither executive suggested the model is easy to replicate. Gingras cautioned that success depends on disciplined execution. “It requires tremendous rigor, tremendous ability to execute,” he said. “If you do the data analysis, if you track everything you’re doing, if you give the team the excitement and passion that the vision deserves, then success can be attained.”

For Village Media, growth hasn’t come from chasing yesterday’s newspaper business. It has come from understanding today’s communities and building a business designed to serve them.