Today, along with several of our news organization’s closest new organization friends, we’re announcing the launch of the Twin Cities Media Group (TCMG), a collection of local, independent publishers who are going to work together to help each other out.

Short-term, this collaboration is going to create a really exciting opportunity for advertisers. For the first time ever, you’ll be able to buy ads across Racket, North News, Heavy Table, KRSM, NewPrensa, and Southwest Voices, all in the same place. While we all serve a diverse set of audiences, geographies, and topics, our owners and operators are all based here, so 100% of the dollars you spend with each of us stays in this community.

Speaking for Southwest Voices, we’ve seen really good results the advertisers that have invested in our ads. The one thing we’re missing is the reach that Facebook and other large publishers can offer. Now, that all changes. Collectively, we have more than 17K email subscribers, nearly half a million monthly website visitors, send email newsletters with open rates as high as 70%, and reach across a mix of channels like radio, digital, email, texting, and print all across the Twin Cities. We believe that this is a unique opportunity for advertisers, event organizers, and more to reach a group of people that they’ve never been able to reach in one place before.

Longer-term, we’re incredibly excited about what this collaboration might bring. From the first meeting we had as a group, we all talked about how fantastic it would be if we could all cover the same topic or find a common theme to really go deep on. We’re hopeful that working together to drive revenue across all of our organizations will enable a lot more collaboration in our journalism in the weeks and months to come.

Independent local news is a really hard business. Going it alone is even harder. But we think that by banding together and delivering a really great opportunity for members of this community to support all of us at once, and to get to reach the fantastic, large, engaged, and growing audience that we all collectively touch, this could be the start of something special. More connections, better infrastructure, more partnerships, and most of all, a thriving, resilient group of local publishers that know that we are stronger together than we are alone. 

To each and every potential advertiser out there, I will leave you with this. Mark Zuckerberg doesn’t need a 9th house – but we need strong, resilient local media in the Twin Cities. Spend your dollars to support the work that makes this a better place to live. Even better, put us head-to-head, and we think our ads will kick their ads butts. 

If you want to chat more about what we’re up to or to talk about booking some ads, shoot an email to our Advertising Relations Manager Vasiliki Papanikolopoulos at vasiliki@southwestvoices.news or check out our website here.