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