What will I actually get out of three days?

Practical inspiration for your business, a head start on implementing it thanks to a Blue Engine coach, and three days with courageous, ambitious peers.

How much does it cost?

BlueLena and Newspack publishers get the Wednesday summits plus Local News Camp for only $100, thanks to The Lenfest Institute for Journalism. Standard ticket pricing details coming soon.

Where should I stay in Durham?

The Aloft Durham Downtown block is sold out, but the Durham Marriott City Center, SpringHill Suites Durham City View, and Unscripted Durham are all a short distance from Bay 7.

Can I just attend the BlueLena or Newspack Summit?

Yes, you can. Please reach out to your contact at BlueLena or Newspack to register for just that portion of the program.

How is Camp different from other events?

Camp is designed to be more collaborative, hands-on, and, frankly, human. This means great inspiration, adventures into local businesses to spark your imagination, and smaller working sessions, like conversations around hypothetical campfires, to help you put your knowledge to work.

Come to Local News Camp

Name: Local News Camp
Start: 2026-10-14T18:00:00-04:00
End: 2026-10-16T12:00:00-04:00
Location: Bay 7

Come to Camp!

A unique experience for courageous, ambitious local news leaders. Together, we will get stuff done, have fun, and leave inspired to crush 2027.

Join us for three days in Durham, NC to build your local news business.

October 14–16, 2026Durham, NC

Come to Camp in 2027 →

Supported by

Meet your Camp partners

Meet your Camp Sponsors

Get Stuff Done · Have Fun · Leave Inspired✦

Local News Camp · 2026

How was Camp?

Camp is about "belief and respect and friendships and possibilities." See what attendees had to say about Local News Camp 2026.

“The path forward is through sharing and collaboration. Local News Camp had many of the best doing just that.”

— Kenny Katzgrau, Publisher, RedBankGreen & Creator of Broadstreet

Camp “felt like the ground zero for the future of local news.”

— Vince Johnson, Publisher, Gulf Coast Media

1–6 of 30 testimonials

View original on LinkedIn

Why Camp?

Why you'll love Local News Camp.

The experience.

Camp is designed to be more collaborative, hands-on, and, frankly, human. We've designed every aspect of the gathering—from workshops and campfires to meals and informal conversations—to help local news leaders make better decisions.

Get the big things right.

We need to get the big business decisions right. To do that, you'll focus on the biggest, toughest challenges in the local news business.

Everybody's in this canoe

You'll talk, work, and explore with leaders who get things done: publishers, editors, CMOs, audience directors, product leaders, and analytics mavens. Attendance is capped to preserve depth, connection, and meaningful exchange.

Outcomes

Crush your 2027 plan.

Participants leave with ideas and relationships that feed directly back into their organizations, including a clear plan for the five trends shaping local news next year.

Come to Camp in 2027 →

01Building world-class news products.
02Making money with video
03Becoming a marketing machine
04Putting AI to work (for real)
05Making the sale to advertisers and philanthropy
+ so much more.

Schedule of Events✦

Three days in Durham

Schedule of events.

Wednesday

October 14

Special event · BlueLena & Newspack registrants only

BlueLena + Newspack Summit

11:30 AM – 5 PM

11:30 AM · Doors open
12:00 PM · Program begins — lunch is included

What's the future of some of local news' most widely-used and effective tools? Get the inside story from Newspack and BlueLena during this immersive gathering.

Bay 7 · 320 Blackwell St, Durham, NC 27701

Open to all Camp-ers

Camp Kickoff Party

6 PM – 8 PM

Boxcar. Pizza. Party. Two hundred people who immediately feel like they've found their people, because they have. We'll have drinks, pizza, and arcade tokens for you to challenge your new Camp bestie at pop-a-shot.

Boxcar Bar + Arcade · 621 Foster St, Durham, NC 27701

Thursday

October 15

Location Bay 7 · 320 Blackwell St, Durham, NC 27701

Local News Camp MC

Candice Fortman

Executive in Residence, Blue Engine Collaborative

You know Candice from Outlier Media, the JSK Fellowship, the LION Awards (IYKYK) — and now you get all of her love, smarts and laughter as the MC of Local News Camp. She'll be our guide to a fantastic time in Durham, on stage and elsewhere.

Opening

Welcome & kickoff

Doors open 8 a.m. · Program begins 8:45 a.m.

Come in and get acquainted with all of your camp adventures for the day.

Keynote conversation

AI for the local news business

9 a.m.

Our keynote conversation and Q&A with Axios co-founder Mike Allen.

Mike Allen

Co-founder, Axios

Discussion

AI in practice

9:45 a.m.

Understand how publishers are putting AI into practice right now to help them build their business.

Discussion

Building world-class products

10:30 a.m.

You probably don't need another newsletter, but you probably do need a dinner, or a local news holding company, or a different way of approaching your journalism. Go deep on what fantastic local news products could be.

Discussion

The year you actually make money with video

11 a.m.

The title says it all. Get the details about how to actually make money with your video strategy.

Discussion

Go big. Go next door.

11:30 a.m.

Expansion — whether into new markets or new products — is a massive opportunity for local news organizations. Hear from leaders on how to size up an opportunity and how to go for it.

Break

Lunch

12 p.m. – 1 p.m.

Networking lunch with your fellow campers.

Provocateur

How to do elite marketing on a local budget

1 p.m.

What does elite local news marketing look like on a budget? Matt McGarry breaks down how he'd attack building a local news marketing plan.

Discussion

We. Need. More. Marketing.

1:20 p.m.

Spending 1% or less on growth isn't going to cut it. Hear from the people who are investing and winning with bold marketing strategies.

Discussion

Your new creator strategy

1:50 p.m.

If you're not working with creators, as Liz Kelly Nelson famously put it at our Business of Local event last year, you're actively choosing a smaller audience. But the way you work with creators is going to vary a lot across different organizations. We're bringing together some folks who have done a lot in this space to explore different ways you can thrive, working with some of the best storytellers on the internet.

Suzanne Perron(Moderator)

Google News Initiative

Discussion

Making the sale for local news

2:20 p.m.

We need to sell to more people—sponsors, funders, stakeholders, and our staff—than ever. Here are some folks making that sale happen, to help you see how to make the pitch for local news even sharper.

Session

Wrap-up

2:40 p.m.

We'll close out the day together before heading out into Durham.

Field trips

Visit incredible local businesses

3 p.m. – 5 p.m.

Book your seat to visit incredible local businesses that will help you see yours in a different way.The Durham BullsEnjoy an interview with the Bulls' top brass about how they sell season tickets, sponsorships, and manage relationships in the local community before getting a tour of the iconic stadium (walking distance from the base of the venue).Scrap ExchangeUnderstand how a nonprofit that refurbishes furniture and turns scrap into art has grown to own a shopping center that's become a platform for causes, small businesses, and community services that make an enormous impact in the life of many in Durham. Then join the Scrap Exchange team for a trophy-making craft activity.

DNNR

Local News Dinner Club

6 p.m. – 10 p.m.

Sign up to get matched with fellow campers for a bespoke dinner in downtown Durham and experience the power of IRL connection and the DNNR service in action! The price of admission gets you a nightcap at a secret location with the whole Camp after dinner.

Come to dinner!

How it works

1Sign up and pay a small fee to be matched with other Camp-ers.
2Meet your group (revealed upon arrival) at fantastic restaurants around downtown Durham.
3All Dinner Club attendees meet up for a nightcap at a secret location hosted by DNNR — where your drinks are on us.

Friday

October 16

Location · 21c Museum Hotel Durham · 111 N Corcoran St, Durham, NC 27701

8:00 – 9:00 AM
Breakfast!
Enjoy a breakfast where you can catch up with your fellow Campers.
9:00 – 11:30 AM
Campfires!
Your time to get to work. Here are the three ways we hope you'll spend the morning:
1. 1. Get to work.
  Sit down and spend some time thinking about how to put what you heard yesterday into action.
2. 2. Join a campfire conversation.
  We'll host structured conversations around the following topics.
  9:15 – 10:15 AM
  Let's make some ugly ads
  Polished isn't profitable. We'll teach you how to make ugly ads that convert on Meta platforms and send you home with creatives you can put to work right away.
  TJ Larkin
  Founder, Local Media HQ
  How to vibe code for visionary leaders and publishers in 30 minutes
  You don't need to be an engineer to build the tool you've been wishing for. Let Broadstreet CEO Kenny Katzgrau show you how to go from idea to a working prototype before the coffee gets cold. Bring a laptop and actually do that AI tinkering you've been thinking about for months.
  Go deep on video monetization
  Get all of your video product and monetization questions answered with Micah Gelman and Lauren Saks of Local News International. They'll break down their big ideas and take your toughest questions.
  Q&A with Newspack's CEO
  Newspack CEO Kinsey Wilson will answer your questions about the future of the platform.
  How to gather better with innovative events
  Most events are forgettable. Yours don't have to be. Rethink how you bring your community together and sketch an event people will actually tell their friends about.
  10:30 – 11:30 AM
  Let's launch your DNNR club!
  DNNR's founders will explain exactly DNNR, help you get onboarded quickly and, if you're up for it, film you making your DNNR announcement! (Plus, you may end up with a special discount).
  AI for analytics
  Get hands-on with AI tools that turn your messy data into answers about your audience and revenue, in minutes instead of weeks. Understand how you can use AI to clean up your analytics, and then try for yourself.
  Talk Marketing with CMOs
  Bring your budget, your funnel, and your hardest marketing questions to the experts in these intimate, roundtable conversations that will help you rock your marketing in 2027.
3. 3. Sit down with someone you'd love to meet.
  Book some time with our speakers or your new colleagues for some quality time together.
11:30 AM – Noon
Camp wrap-up and departure
See you next year!

Speakers

Meet your Camp Guides.

Keynote

Mike Allen

Co-founder, Axios

Ned Berke

Co-Founder and Chief Strategy Officer, BlueLena

TJ Larkin

Founder, Local Media HQ

Suzanne Perron

Google News Initiative

More to come

Additional speakers and session leaders announced soon.

Testimonials✦

Can you prove it?

People love Blue Engine events.

Maybe the most valuable event I've attended in the past five years.

It was a nonstop learning experience, surrounded by other passionate local news leaders and market players.

I had so many great takeaways. It was refreshing to attend a conference focused on revenue generators for for-profit orgs!

I left with a lot of action steps that didn't feel overwhelming, because I had already started to put them in motion before leaving.

For You?

Are you a Camp kind of person?

If you have the courage to build an amazing local news business and the ambition to believe it can actually be done, we want you at Camp.

If you believe you'll better understand where to go next in conversation with other brilliant people who don't take themselves too seriously, we want you at Camp.

If you think your 2027 plan will be better with input from dozens of other people on the same journey, we want you at Camp.

You'll leave with unrivaled practical inspiration for your business, a head start on implementing it thanks to experts including Blue Engine coaches, and you'll have a ton of fun with your courageous, ambitious peers.

Buy a ticket →

We're eager to answer your questions. Just email us at Hello@BlueEngineCollaborative.com.

Scenes from Camp

Have fun getting things done.

Real conversations. Long dinners. Working sessions that go somewhere. Camp is hundreds of small moments that add up to a different way of running your business.