The Truth About Local Newsletters No One Wants To Admit with Daniel Berk

**Daniel Berk** (0:00)
Email does change, and email has changed, but I don't think email is going anywhere. I think we have at least 10 years more of people using email.

**Matt McGarry** (0:07)
There is no alternative to email. Email is still the most valuable audience you can have. A long time ago, someone put me up on a screen at a conference and shit on me because I said email is an owned audience platform.

**Kolby Hatch** (0:18)
Who is that?

**Daniel Berk** (0:19)
Yeah, don't say their name. Delete it from the record, FBI.

**Matt McGarry** (0:22)
This is so ridiculous to say. What we're talking about is you own the contact information. As long as those people agree to receive messages from you.

**Daniel Berk** (0:30)
You own the funnel is what it is. If you don't own the actual distribution funnel to get in contact with them if that tech layer stopped existing, then you don't own anything. The tech layer owns it.

**Kolby Hatch** (0:44)
Hey, welcome to New Media. I'm your host Kolby here with Matt.

**Matt McGarry** (0:48)
Hey.

**Kolby Hatch** (0:49)
Today's episode, we're joined by Daniel Berk, the original sales guy from Beehive and now also the co-host of Moneywise. He also has a local newsletter, multi-hyphenate guy, a lot going on.

**Matt McGarry** (1:03)
He does so much stuff. He's a fun guy to talk to. We dove into a lot of different stuff too. So this is like a variety episode. We talked about his local media company and local newsletter he's building. He has kind of a unique angle. It's not going after the typical audience that most people are. We dove into like a bunch of creative ways to monetize that people can consider if they run a local media company.
I was talking about how email is less reliable. So we had a debate about that. We gave you the tweet and we gave you our thoughts. So here's the pod. All right, Daniel, what's up? Thanks for joining.

**Daniel Berk** (2:05)
Not too much, man. It's great to be here. It's good to see you again. Both of you feel like it's it's been years, but also only a few moments since we last saw.

**Matt McGarry** (2:13)
Yeah, that's right. New Media Summit, not too long ago. And hopefully we'll see you all again soon there.
Tell us about what's like local media, local newsletters for a second, because you've been building a cool local media company that's has a unique angle. I haven't seen Kolby is building one too. So give us, and I actually don't know a lot about it. So give us the rundown of like what it is. And then we want to talk about how to successfully build one because a lot of listeners have a local media company or newsletter or in so many people are curious to start one.

**Daniel Berk** (2:42)
Yeah, I think first the thought comes to mind is what does success look like? And I think a lot of people think there's this arbitrage opportunity to build a local media company that's going to make you like millions and millions of dollars. I look at it quite a bit differently. Like the local media company, it's self-sustaining. It makes us some money, but the intent isn't even for it to be the million dollar opportunity. The intent for us is to be intentional about deliberately networking with people in our real world. Everything we do behind a screen, I work in tech, you work in tech slash adjacent media, we're always behind screens. When we get out into the real world, that's our lives. This is also our lives, we're like, that's actually our lives. The local media play for us is let us build a space that people resonate with and since it's parents, so the local media company is called Palmetto Parents, started really as just a weekly newsletter two years ago in Summerville, South Carolina. It's since evolved to three different newsletters, two weekly and then one bi-weekly or monthly rather.
It's really evolved into a place where people actually resonate with other Palmetto parents. We address them as Palmetto parents. It's like a community adjacent type of IRL resonation with all these different parents who subscribe to this newsletter, which is now an event and we've just had our two-year celebration with hundreds of people. They brought their families. We booked out this massive outdoor coffee shop thing and people are constantly replying and thanking us for what we're doing. It's filling a void and it's meeting a real need and it's really just giving information and firsthand experiences about what the heck do you do in this area with kids. A lot of people have kids in this area and all of them are trying to figure out how to occupy these kids of theirs for however many hours per day and so we provide that space for people to learn but also connect with other parents.