Report

Is email king for local news marketing?

Newspaper executives are betting big on newsletters — but with shoestring marketing budgets — to drive 2026 growth.

April 30, 2026

When America’s newspaper executives place their chips on a marketing channel for next year’s growth, they cast their eyes on an old, trusty friend: the humble email.

This month, Blue Engine Collaborative and The Lenfest Institute for Journalism surveyed American newspaper executives in our fourth Newspaper Executive Insights poll. (Earlier polls covered philanthropy in 2026, biggest regrets, and AI wish lists.) We asked two questions:

Which marketing channel are you most optimistic will grow your business in the next year?
What percentage of your revenue do you spend on marketing per year?

Nearly half of the respondents named email or newsletters as their top growth bet.

The rest scattered across a creative mix of channels including YouTube, video screens in local businesses, real-estate partnerships, and texting.

While email was the big winner, the survey also surfaced a major challenge: most are spending just 1% of their revenue on marketing.

It’s quite clear that American local news players, whether in digitally native local news or in newspapers, are vastly underinvesting in their marketing efforts.

Let’s get into it.

Email is winning the moment

Over half the respondents named email, newsletters, or some flavor of both as their #1 growth channel — the most decisive consensus we’ve seen in this series so far. The case comes down to two things: its flexibility in supporting the entire business and its perceived steadiness versus other channels.

“Email continues to provide the best results and volume,” said Patrick Dorsey, publisher of The Santa Fe New Mexican. “We use [it] for subscriber/donor nurturing, highlighting content, and encouraging use of our digital products… This is still our best channel for subscriber acquisition. With the recent Local News Day, it was a great tool for thanking our subscribers and community.”

Email is also where subscriber growth lives. Isaiah Buse, publisher of the Houston Herald, said his team is “spending more time on our [email] offerings and find[s] it has the highest conversion rate for paid subscribers.”

Others made the case for building an audience they, within some limits, “own” versus the greater uncertainty behind algorithmic changes on other platforms. “The performance/conversion metrics are there, and it’s owned,” a southern newspaper executive said. “Social media is growing much faster, and has been great for reach and brand awareness, but algorithm changes can upend a good thing at any time.”

A penny on the dollar.

Of respondents who shared their marketing spend percentage, 2 in 3 spend 1% of revenue on marketing per year. Only 1 in 5 spent 5% or more.

Santa Fe’s Dorsey, who selected 1%, added the kicker many seemed to feel: his real answer was “Not enough!”

The publishers who break out next year may be the ones who push past 1% and start treating marketing as a growth engine rather than a line item.

Don’t sleep on the experimenters

While email was our headline, several executives are experimenting with other areas.

Strategic partnerships in real estate: Benjamin Hall, associate publisher of the Cape May County Herald in New Jersey, sees opportunity in the housing market. “Here in Cape May County, a peninsula at the tip of NJ where 50% of the second homes in NJ are located, real estate is king,” he said. “My next strategic push is to create deals with brokers to get the Herald subscription included in some way every time a home changes hands to a new out-of-towner.”

Streaming and screens: Bob Bonnar, publisher and editor-in-chief of the News Letter Journal in Newcastle, Wyo., named streaming video and audio as his top channel — measured in active users and subscribers. Reed Anfinson, publisher of Minnesota’s Swift County Monitor-News, is putting his bet on video screens inside local businesses: “We are seeing the most interest in this new endeavor,” Anfinson said.

YouTube: “Young people spend a ton of time on YouTube, and we’ve got to have more of a presence there,” said a midwestern newspaper executive. “Plus, anything we can do to become less reliant on Facebook marketing is a good thing.”

Texting: A regional newspaper executive pointed to text-based polls and best-of contests as a fast-growing audience-data channel.

Targeted social media. Matt Paxton, publisher of The News-Gazette in Lexington, Va., credits a digital content manager hire with a 14% follower lift in six months. “Social media offers us the ability to project outside our established print and email channels to new potential customers and readers,” Paxton said.

The bottom line

If 1% is what most newspaper businesses allocate to marketing today, the question for the back half of 2026 isn’t whether email is king. It’s whether the king is being properly funded.