The Business
“Most entrepreneurial ideas will sound crazy, stupid and uneconomic, and then they’ll turn out to be right.”
The Equation:
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The business model for N2 is the same one used by media companies around the globe that create entertainment content for streaming platforms. It works like this: a platform contracts with a company (N2) to produce content. The contract provides a large percentage of the developmental budget upfront to start production. Over the course of production, progress payments are made to ensure production is completed and done on time. At the end of the production, final payments are made and the content is delivered or licensed, to the streaming platform for distribution.
As the company’s primary revenue stream, this provides the necessary resources to establish news bureaus across all states while also freeing the company to focus on the most important aspect of its business: reporting the news.
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The production contract and progress payments, as the company’s primary revenue stream, provide the critical resources needed to establish news bureaus across all states while allowing N2 to focus on its core mission: delivering high-quality news coverage.
In addition to this primary revenue source, N2 benefits from secondary and tertiary income streams rooted in proven new media business models: advertising and licensing. Through distribution agreements, N2 can license condensed versions of its stories for use in traditional linear formats as well as print and digital platforms.
As the only news organization dedicated to covering local and regional stories for streaming audiences, N2 offers existing news outlets the opportunity to license its content for their own audiences. This not only generates additional revenue for N2 but also boosts subscriptions and viewing hours for streaming platforms, helping reduce subscriber churn. The COVID-19 pandemic has demonstrated that people are unlikely to cancel their streaming subscriptions, even during economic downturns, making these platforms a resilient partner in challenging times.
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Daily newscasts consisting of stories directly relevant to the public interest with a laser focus on credibility, accuracy, responsibility and unmatched quality.
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We will partner with credible local journalists who live in and understand their communities, providing them fair compensation to report on important stories affecting their regions. Through direct financial support and editorial resources, we enable these independent reporters to conduct thorough investigations and produce high-quality coverage, while maintaining their editorial independence. This model ensures communities receive meaningful local reporting from trusted voices who know the issues that matter most to residents.
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From a financial standpoint, we see this as the only sustainable model that will support local news in a way that rebuilds local reporting capacity. It’s a win-win-win for the platform, for news consumers, and for the company.
A Sustainable Revenue Model
Primary revenue is an industry-standard content production contract
Secondary and Tertiary revenue from advertising, licensing, podcasts, and feature documentary production
The combination of contract revenue plus licensing and ad revenues equals a sustainable revenue stream supporting a stable and growing news organization
No Need for Traditional Capital
We do not anticipate requiring multiple rounds of traditional startup funding to launch or sustain our business. Unlike most news organizations that depend on substantial upfront investments for salaries, office spaces, and operational costs, our primary funding is derived directly from production contracts and sales, rather than capital raises.
This approach provides a significant competitive advantage by:
Preserving equity for founders, staff, and initial investors.
Enabling focus on refining our business model and delivering a quality news product.
Increasing the company’s value as the model proves successful.
Offering flexibility to adapt as new opportunities emerge and technology advances, and markets evolve.
Eliminating the distractions plaguing so many other news-gathering organizations.
Simplicity has its advantages
By avoiding the cost, necessity and responsibility of building a subscriber base, maintaining network infrastructure, and supporting business units unrelated to reporting, N2 can allocate the majority of its resources to what it does best: delivering exceptional original hyperlocal content from top-tier journalists in every state, every single day.
Staffing Up
Layoffs resulting from downsizing or closing newsrooms and media organizations have created a broad marketplace of available talented journalists. We will actively recruit producers, editors, and technicians through outreach and partnerships with professional associations, talent referral services, gig staffing agencies, social media, and word of mouth.
To provide coverage in more rural areas, we will contract with independent journalists to both alert us to new stories and cover them.
N2 will also partner with other newsrooms, increasing coverage, and audience size while also promoting the availability of news on our VOD platform.
“We want to create an environment where our teams know they’re fundamentally changing the news industry for the better and restoring the media’s true purpose, which is informing the people and preserving democracy.”
Roll Out
The rollout plan is designed to refine the newscast, test reporting, and staffing models, establish partnerships and explore funding strategy. VOD priorities will influence the actual deployment process and timeline.
Full launch depends on resources and the ability to staff up. We envision a pilot launch in four states to full operations in all 50 states in four phases covering approximately four years.
The number of news teams is calculated using total state population urban and rural population distributions, travel time and distance between communities statewide.