How is The Ledger doing?

As 2024 comes to a close, a status update on The Charlotte Ledger's business side

Last week, we received a nice email from a high school senior. She wrote that she was thankful for The Ledger’s September article about funding for music programs at Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools.

I forgive you if you don’t recall the article. Written by The Ledger’s Cristina Bolling, it reported that band and orchestra directors at CMS middle and high schools were worried about how they might fix squeaking woodwinds, worn-off key pads, dented percussion bells and other damaged instruments — especially since CMS had indicated to them that their repair budgets would be cut by more than half, to an average of $300 per school.

After Cristina started asking questions, CMS notified music directors that it had made an error, and that the funding levels would remain the same. And after we published her article, the Charlotte Symphony said it was “deeply alarmed” by the article and took up the cause of CMS instrument repairs, saying it was “committed to taking action by bringing together a consortium of funders, community partners, and instrument repair specialists to address this pressing need.”

The email from the high school student last week said that band meant a lot to her, and that “the article’s impact was extraordinary.”

Now, this wasn’t a big investigation on our part. But it’s one example that The Ledger is providing a service that people find helpful and useful in understanding our community.

As journalists, we take no position on the proper amount of CMS funding for musical instrument repairs, or on most other issues where reasonable people can disagree. Our role is to provide fair and responsible information that enlightens people about Charlotte.

Nearly six years after I started The Ledger as a one-person operation from my couch, we’re fulfilling the original vision better than ever before. We’re no longer in the experimental start-up phase. We’re building a team. We’re getting stronger and better. And we’re increasingly filling some of the information voids that have emerged as longtime media continue to scale back.

We hear a lot from our readers like that high school senior. They provide tips, ideas, criticism and suggestions.

One of the questions I’m asked a lot is, “How is it going with The Ledger?” As 2024 winds down, as we look backward and look ahead, now is the traditional time to answer. In the spirit of transparency, we’re giving you a peek behind the curtain of our operation.

Industry changes

Let me start by saying this is a weird time in the media world. People are receiving information from more places than ever before. On one hand, the expansion of new voices on social media is great for consumers, because you have many more options, and ones that can be customized to your interests.

The downside, though, is that it can be hard to judge the accuracy of information that you find online. In addition, social media platforms can influence our visions of reality in the way that they favor some kinds of posts over others. I don’t know about you, but my feeds lately seem to have a lot of cat videos. I’m not opposed to cat videos, but cute cats and their silly antics are taking up more of my brain space than I like.

For providers of information, like us, it is tempting to want to bend our coverage to try to satisfy social media algorithms. Posts on light and breezy subjects that we consider of minor significance — like the opening of a restaurant, or the addition of a single flight to a new city — tend to attract more attention on social media than topics we consider more significant, such as a thorough look at the problem of medical debt or orchestra funding.

You want AI-generated videos of lovable cats strolling through uptown Charlotte? Or mouthwatering photos of local dishes, like this traditional seafood paella from Miró Spanish Grille in Ballantyne? We can do that! (We can — but we won’t.)

However, we at The Ledger are clear-headed about the type of information we think is valuable for Charlotte, and we’re going to stick with our instincts, instead of trying to surf the constantly changing whims of social media and search engines. (For others, that has proven to be a frustrating and losing strategy.)

Interestingly, our most-read stories of the year generally attracted little attention on social media. Readers spread them largely by email. And they weren’t clickbait, either — they tended to be thoughtful and high-quality articles, including a deep dive into Aldersgate’s troubles that drew on public records; an early summary and photo essay on the severe storm damage in the N.C. mountains when such information was scarce; a look at the perks Atrium Health enjoys as a unit of government known as a “hospital authority”; and a piece of masterful storytelling on the final delivery runs by Charlotte newspaper carriers.

Instead of working to maximize clicks or “likes,” we focus on measures that are more relevant to the health of our business. We want to ensure that our readers are happy with The Ledger, and we also want to increase revenue from subscriptions and sponsorships so we can keep growing and improving. Let’s take a closer look at these.

Listening to readers

At the risk of sounding obvious, when you’re running a business, you want to ensure that your customers value your product or service. In our case, our main customers are our subscribers. I would note that this is not true of media businesses that rely primarily on advertising, as their customers are mainly advertisers.

In August, we surveyed our readers. We asked them on a scale of 1-10 how likely they would be to recommend The Ledger to others — and 8 out of 10 paid subscribers who filled out the survey rated us as a “9” or “10.” Businesses commonly judge their customer loyalty by turning those numbers into what’s called a “Net Promoter Score,” which is the number of recommenders minus the number of detractors. For paying subscribers, our Net Promoter Score worked out to 77% — an exceptionally high figure.

From the 460 completed surveys, we also learned this about our readers:

• 54% said they had household incomes of $200,000+, including 14% who said it was $500,000+

• 93% said they have a bachelor’s degree or above, including 14% who said they had doctorates

• The five ZIP codes with the most Ledger readers are all in south Charlotte: 28211, 28210, 28203, 28207 and 28226

• The most common ages were people in their 40s (24.3%) and 50s (27.2%), which combined made up more than half of those surveyed

• Survey respondents’ top sources of news sources besides The Ledger were the New York Times (14%), Wall Street Journal (9%), Axios (8%), The Charlotte Observer (7%) and the Charlotte Business Journal (5%)

We also gleaned other information that will help us improve, such as areas on which to focus more of our attention.

To keep delivering value to our readers, in addition to our day-in-and-day-out newsletters, we also rolled out some new features that readers seemed to enjoy this year, including:

• A new pop-up (temporary) Mountain Updates newsletter, devoted to covering the crisis and recovery in the N.C. mountains after Tropical Storm Helene

• Charlotte Commercial Real Estate Whispers, an in-the-know regular column that closely follows Charlotte’s growth and development

• A revamped and expanded Charlotte Ledger Election Hub, with unbiased and comprehensive biographies of 200 state and local candidates in five Charlotte-area counties, presented in an easy-on-the-eyes online format and free to all

• We also created a free email course for Charlotte newcomers, celebrated our 5th year of 40 Over 40 winners, launched a merch store, revamped our events board and overhauled our website

That’s a lot!

The Ledger in 2024 rolled out (clockwise from upper left) a free 7-day email series aimed at Charlotte newcomers, a free and comprehensive election guide, a free pop-up newsletter on the recovery in the N.C. mountains and a members-only column on growth and development.

Subscriptions still growing, but more slowly

The number of paying Ledger subscribers increased this year, so that’s positive. But we’re not adding them at the same pace as we have previously.

Through Dec. 29, we added a net of 271 paying members in 2024, for a total of 3,844. In addition, in November, we added about 950 readers through an arrangement with The Sharon retirement community to provide subscriptions to its residents and waiting list, at what is essentially a group or discounted rate, for a total of 4,795 people receiving our full, paid edition.

We’re happy with that. We have a sustainable business with those numbers. (Unlike most other subscription media, I should note, we don’t offer bottom-rate “$1 for 6 months!” types of introductory deals that can artificially inflate subscriber numbers, deflate the value of our work and fail to benefit our most loyal customers.)

Yet the addition of nearly 300 subscribers (not counting the partnership with The Sharon) does represent a slowing of growth of paid members, compared with previous years: We added a net of 1,118 paid subscribers in 2021, 691 in 2022 and 351 in 2023.

Our revenue from subscriptions in 2024 is up 17% compared with 2023 (excluding The Sharon partnership). That’s slightly better than our growth last year, though not as strong as 2022.

Is that worrisome? We’d like the growth to be more robust, sure. But in a competitive media environment, for a company that’s almost 6 years old, we’ll take it. And despite higher costs, we have never raised prices since we started a subscriber version five years ago.

In 2024, subscriber revenue accounted for 72% of The Ledger’s total revenue, slightly higher than in 2023.

Many thanks to those of you who subscribe. We could not do this without you.

Our overall email list, composed of free and paid readers, grew by about 5,400 in 2024, to nearly 26,000. The growth of that list has stayed amazingly stable since we started in 2019, though 5,400 in a year is the most we have ever had.

We’re optimistic about future subscription growth because we come across a lot of people who are unfamiliar with The Charlotte Ledger. As a friend remarked to me recently, “You still have wood to chop.”

A boost in sponsorship revenue

Another goal we set for 2024 was to increase our revenue from sponsors. It is important for any business to have diverse streams of revenue, and we are grateful for the companies who support us in this way — including several that have been with us for years.

Thanks in large measure to the leadership of our business manager, Brie Chrisman, we doubled our sponsorship revenue in 2024 compared with a year earlier.

This year, sponsorships made up about 15% of our revenue. I should mention that we intentionally limit the number of sponsorships in our newsletters as to not overwhelm our readers. In our reader survey, 73% said they thought the number of sponsorships in our newsletters was “just right” and 25% said they “wouldn’t mind more,” so we think we are striking the right balance.

Brie and her team sold almost all of our sponsorship slots in our flagship newsletter this year, typically months ahead of time. (If you want in for 2025, there is still some space available.)

Other sources of Ledger revenue in 2024 included events (9%), syndication of content to other media (2%) and our events board (1%).

Where does the money go?

The Ledger is a lean operation. Our team consists of three full-time employees, a part-time business manager and more than a dozen regular freelance contributors, who are vital to our success. They write and edit articles, take care of our customers and help with other key parts of our operation.

Our employees and freelancers support what The Ledger is doing and think it’s positive for Charlotte. But this isn’t a hobby. They don’t work for free.

In 2024, about 69% of our revenue went to people in Charlotte who directly produce our articles. About 9% went toward events, primarily our 40 Over 40 awards. The remainder, about 22%, went for a variety of business-side costs that are sometimes described as “overhead” but are actually essential expenses — things like technology, a variety of taxes, credit card processing fees, administrative costs and media liability insurance.

Our costs have risen, too — they’re up 15% this year compared with last year, as we increased our use of freelance writers as we have expanded our coverage.

There’s more to come

Overall, our team feels good about where we are. We’re keeping our readers happy. In a tough and competitive media environment, we’re continuing to grow. We can comfortably pay our expenses with the revenue we generate, thanks to our supportive readers and sponsors. (We have no secret benefactors, investors, big foundations or business conglomerates backing us — we run based on the revenue we generate.)

And we’re fulfilling our mission of providing smart and responsible information for Charlotte, and shining lights on topics that otherwise would receive little attention — like band instrument repairs and much, much more.

We’re planning to keep it up in 2025. Thanks again for your support.

—Tony Mecia, The Charlotte Ledger

P.S. If you have any comments or suggestions, you are always free to drop us a line.

P.P.S. The Ledger team wishes you a happy new year! All the best for a healthy and prosperous 2025.

The Ledger’s three full-timers (left to right): Cristina Bolling, Tony Mecia and Lindsey Banks.

➡️ Read about some of our top articles and podcasts from 2024

➡️ For more on The Ledger’s origin story, check out the 2023 article “Unfrozen caveman journalist,” or 🎧 listen to Tony and Cristina discuss the topic on a 2023 episode of The Charlotte Ledger Podcast.

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The Charlotte Ledger is a locally owned media company that delivers smart and essential news through e-newsletters and on a website. We strive for fairness and accuracy and will correct all known errors. The content reflects the independent editorial judgment of The Charlotte Ledger. Any advertising, paid marketing, or sponsored content will be clearly labeled.

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Executive editor: Tony Mecia; Managing editor: Cristina Bolling; Staff writer: Lindsey Banks; Business manager: Brie Chrisman