“Many have said it couldn’t be done”: Local news site Lookout Santa Cruz is profitable thanks to ads and memberships

Buried in an opinion piece about California’s Community NEWS Act is the announcement that Lookout Santa Cruz has achieved something remarkable (and rare) in local news: It’s profitable.

Six years after launching Lookout Santa Cruz, CEO Ken Doctor writes, the local news org is “thriving.”

“It’s fun to point to our 2024 Pulitzer Prize for Breaking News (covering the disastrous flooding of January 2023), but it’s the daily impact of big accountability stories and smaller know-your-city stories that makes us proud,” Doctor wrote. “We now reach more than half the adults in Santa Cruz County each month, and we are still growing our audience quarter by quarter. And though many have said it couldn’t be done, Lookout Santa Cruz achieved profitability on earned revenue — membership and advertising money — in 2026.”

No silver bullet has emerged to solve the crisis in local news but the most robust local outlets are relying on diversified revenue, with subscriptions or memberships and locally sold ads often serving as key revenue streams. Research also suggests that disciplined, low-overhead operations are more durable.

Doctor, a long-time contributor to Nieman Lab, made the move from media analyst to media CEO in 2020. He credited “a good year and steady progress, both on membership and advertising,” for the milestone.

Lookout launched a second newsroom in Eugene, Oregon, in 2025. The local news company expects to have 10,000 members across both locations by the end of the year.

“Lots of things [got better] over time,” Doctor told me, “and the Eugene launch has worked even faster, at about 60% of expenses covered by earned income in less than two years.”

About 60% of Lookout Santa Cruz’s revenue comes from advertising, with another 40% from memberships. In both Eugene and Santa Cruz, Lookout Local has more than 40 marketing partners. Average deal sizes range from $1,500 to $6,000, A Media Operator reported earlier this year.

A third newsroom and a consulting arm called Lookout Growth are on deck for 2027. Doctor hopes to have Lookouts in five locations — all in cities on the West Coast — by the end of 2028.