Can a local newsletter be only events?

My wife and I were spending about 60 hours a week covering everything a local newspaper would. Most of that surface area turned out to be optional.

"I've seen newsletters that are just events, literally only events, and that's probably the 80-20 of this model."

Why events?

Because that's what readers tell me, every time. My post-subscribe survey asks new subscribers what they care about most. Roughly 80% click events. Restaurants are usually second. Across some multi-location surveys it's been closer to 90% events, in every location. In one stretch the answer came back around 85.

People still care about everything else. Events is what they care about most.

Two honest caveats:

• That 80% is a stated preference from a survey. It's not a click rate and it's not willingness to pay.
• Don't assume it for your market. Run the survey and know for a fact.

The reason is simple: finding events is shockingly hard. There's rarely one central place to see what's going on. People are tired of missing things, digging through Facebook saves and Meetup, and piecing together news from TV sites and weak local paper sites. Curating that into one email is easy for you and valuable for them.

How should you start, and when do you add more?

Start with what people want and add on as it makes sense. When we planned a new market in early 2025, the plan was:

1. 0 to roughly 2,500 or 5,000 subscribers: events only.
2. Once that's proven: add restaurant content.
3. Around 5,000: add local news.

It keeps the early newsletter short and cheap to make. For a newsletter-as-a-service project with a buddy, we started with just events and maybe restaurants. You don't have to do all the other stuff, especially at first. People will still be happy.

Do you need news at all?

Not to start. People like seeing news when it's relevant and interesting. If it weren't there, they'd still be happy. I've asked myself whether news is extra work that isn't technically causing anyone to open. If covering a story doesn't raise your open rate, it didn't get an advertiser to give you more money.

Billy Howell, who runs a local newsletter and came on my podcast, dropped news because he saw no way to monetize it. Restaurants and events can be sponsored. He had about 3,500 subscribers after 26 issues.

News does do one job well. It gives people a reason to open in a week when they're busy and not going to any events. What new restaurants are opening? Why is the road closed?

Decide the shape of your brand up front. Most of mine cover everything interesting in the community. Another operator I know runs more of a lifestyle brand: a weekly local history story, mostly events, and photos from last week's events. No news. That's easier in one way, because pulling news means rewriting someone else's story and asking whether you have to cite them. There are pros and cons to both.

Do the events have to be the absolute best ones?

No. I asked myself what changes if we publish six pretty good events we found quickly instead of the ten best. I'm pretty confident the answer is nothing. That's a prediction, not a measured test, and my own team still struggles to act on it out of habit.

"People just don't pay that close attention. They glance at our emails to see if there's something they like, and they're off."

Readers aren't analyzing your issue the way you do when you build it. In most towns your competition is nothing.

Is an events-only newsletter safe from AI?

Not forever. Today there's no easy way for people to find all the events in their area, so it doesn't matter yet. But if all you're doing is events, at some point soon AI will probably do that 100%. So what's your value when that happens?

My answer is to be truly local. Talk to people in person. Stay in the market long enough that people see you over and over. A lot of it is just time in the market.

The big one is in-person meetups. AI is going to make people feel more disconnected than ever, and they already do. People will want to meet in person more. If your brand becomes the community center that brings people together, I think that's incredibly valuable over the long term.

Should events be your marketing hook too?

Yes. In my consulting work with publishers, it really does boil down to events. Events are what people gravitate to most on Meta, so I use them as the broad hook to bring in everybody, even for publishers whose real product is news or business stories. Readers often end up loving the other sections more. Once you have the everybody angle, hit narrower segments with specific messages.

One rule: deliver what you promise. I won't run ads saying "we keep you up to date on events" for a newsletter that never has events. Check that the events section exists before the ads go live.

The full process is in how I build the events section.