How should a new local newsletter position itself against the local newspaper?

When someone launches a newsletter in a town that already has a newspaper, a news site or AI-written newsletters, I tell them to pitch it like this: you are the fun media company.

"There was an accident on [a street], a three-car pileup. Nobody wants to read that, right? We don't cover that. We cover, what new restaurant opened in town, right? What event's coming? Which concerts are coming? What fun family activities are there?"

What's the contrast with a newspaper?

Say what you're the opposite of. A newspaper is boring old guys with journalism degrees interviewing boring people about plumbing and city council problems, and they don't talk about events. You're fun to read. You curate as a local. You do Instagram, which lets that personality run across the whole brand and not just the newsletter. You only cover things people care about.

The other outlets aren't human curated, and one of the biggest gaps is design. They're basically text. Mine have memes and GIFs in them (here's why I use memes and GIFs).

What does creator-led mean?

It's my term for the whole model, B2B or B2C: modern, creator-led local media brands.

• Modern means not print and not bad WordPress websites, which is how most local media still works. It means newsletters, high-quality websites, social media and now events, maybe a podcast.
• Creator-led means personality. You're the face of the brand, people know you, you write in the first person. Old-school local media is written by journalists you don't know and don't care about.

How do you stand out in a crowded metro?

Give the brand a sharp identity and tone. A partner's brand in the Vegas suburbs is deliberately the anti-Vegas: we don't talk about the Strip, we don't talk about casinos. Locals still go to the Strip for special events, so a few Strip events on the calendar are fine. We're the local media brand, not the tourist brand.

Don't swing too narrow, though. A newsletter only for entrepreneurs gets too small. Cover general local and add a section for a specific interest.

What's your moat when AI can write anything?

Creating real content in your community, in whatever form. A lazy entrepreneur in another state can't do it, and AI can't do it. Going out and filming videos in your town is a moat. A journalism background is a strong one too, because real journalism is hard. A podcast guest of mine, Phat, came from the Chicago Tribune and Yahoo, and he treats that as his advantage since he doesn't have to hire writers.

If AI flips local information from too little to too much, the job becomes curation. You saw 140 articles about what happened yesterday? Here are the two or three things you need to know.