Now just over six years old, *The City* is aimed at New York’s underserved neighbourhoods – of which there are many.

“There are huge swathes of the city that are home to millions of people that are not reflected in journalism at all,” explained Executive Director Nic Dawes.

*The City’s* solution is to take its “pretty rigorous” investigative reporting directly to the community most affected, and deliver impactful data upfront, for further engagement.

The concept, called the Open Newsroom, is an interaction session (live, mostly – but also virtual) kickstarted with a “highly targeted” direct marketing invitation in the form of a QR-coded postcard.

That *The City* is relevant, and meeting a need, is reflected in the responses to this hybrid engagement technique, which has yielded manifold benefits:

1) effectively ups engagement
2) boosts brand awareness
3) increases reporting acumen (and delivers evergreen stories)
4) activates relational trust with partnering organisations; and
5) stimulates additional revenue

Perhaps even more telling,is that the direct marketing method yields greater returns then paid acquisition on social media.

“we get about a seven to eight times better CTR (click-through response) on these postcards than we do from the classically high-performing paid acquisition through Meta,” Dawes said.

“They’re essential to our ability to rely less on search and to get ahead of the problem of search summaries that are intermediating us out of the picture.”

Reinforcing trust with transparency

Connecting with readers this way no

Building Trust and Revenue Through Community Collaboration

News organizations are increasingly recognizing the value of collaborating with community groups, not just for audience growth, but also for building sustainable revenue streams. This approach fosters deeper connections with audiences and unlocks new financial opportunities.

The benefits of collaborating outweigh any challenges, extending beyond audience development into revenue building.

“It not only enables us to be more responsive, more trusted and more relevant, but also to build direct, one-to-one relationships with our audiences and communities that can provide a degree of resilience against Google zero and other forms of AI-related disruption,” affirmed Greg Dawes.

He explained that collaboration “empowers you with proxies in the community to enable you to use the relational trust that those organisations have, and that you might lack – much likewise that creators have relational trust, and that lets you use the power of organising to build the conversation.”

“All of this brings with it a lot of opportunities for building our email list and for revenue opportunities, whether those are in growing our reader contributions or in the form of sponsorships, small and large,” Dawes said.

He illustrated this point with an upcoming community session focused on preserving generational wealth in Black neighborhoods.The session secured enough sponsorship from a major bank to “cover the cost of this reporter pretty much for a year.”

“So there are real commercial opportunities along with list building and trust building opportunities in this space.”