Allison Murphy, COO of Axios, joined me to discuss the evolution of Axios Local five years in. Axios plans to be in 43 cities by the end of the year. It is adapting its franchise model to build around individual reporters. In this model, the journalist becomes “talent” for multi-facated businesses, with Axios providing the support structure, shared services and a small team. We touch on how using AI tools can enable this kind of small-team approach.

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Chapters:

00:00 Beehiiv Sponsor Spotlight
01:18 Meet Axios COO Allison
01:44 Whats Working Now
03:00 Revenue Events Memberships
04:02 Axios Local Five Year Check
04:24 Scaling Cities Lean Teams
06:37 AI Tools For Reporters
09:28 Profitability Through Scale
11:58 Local Ads National Buys
15:03 Utility First Local News
17:58 Original Reporting Vs Curation
20:03 Finding The Right Content Mix
23:23 Scaling Local Newsrooms
24:17 Next Wave Smaller Markets
25:16 Membership Contribution Engine
26:13 Perks Pricing And Growth
28:20 Building Star Reporter Franchises
32:51 Are Newsletters Still Core
35:55 Video YouTube And New Bets
38:01 AI Audio Automation Experiments
39:35 Reshaping Teams With AI
41:53 More Reporters Less Overhead
44:25 Transparent Future Of Work
45:01 Wrap Up And Thanks

Axios bring the franchise model to local