loky*: Newsletter Growth Through Community as a Product Principle

In German; click on settings for English subtitles

A dead bird on the sidewalk, the smell of barbecue in the park, a question about one’s own street: at loky*, observations like these can become the starting point for journalistic work. Not because every reader email automatically turns into a story, but because the product is designed to systematically take ideas from the community seriously. What many newsrooms would treat as post-publication feedback is integrated into editorial planning at this digital local news outlet in Berlin.

Starting Point: A Local Newsletter with Scalable Ambitions

loky* is a digital local news platform serving residents of several central Berlin neighbourhoods. At its core is the newsletter, which combines investigative local reporting, analysis, practical service updates, and input from the community. The website supports the product through web articles, landing pages, and sign-up flows. But the real relationship is built in the inbox. The business model combines public-interest journalism with an entrepreneurial approach. Rather than selling exclusive access to information, loky* aims to provide a sense of connection, trust, and guidance in everyday local life. In the long term, revenue is expected to come primarily from memberships and sponsorships.

Before launching, the team tested its core product assumptions during a pilot phase that ran over several months using an existing local newsletter. loky* has its roots in an earlier project, Prenzlauer Berg Nachrichten, also founded by Juliane Schader and Philipp Schwörbel. Readers from that community formed the foundation of the new offering. Even at this early stage, it became clear that the concept was viable: loky* reached around 2,500 newsletter subscribers, achieved high engagement, and retained the paying members from its predecessor.

Since 2025, Media Forward Fund has been cooperating with loky* on a €400,000 project. The partnership aims to transform a successful prototype into a scalable local news community. To achieve this, loky* has expanded its coverage area from Prenzlauer Berg to the neighbouring districts of Pankow, Weißensee, and Mitte, is building its editorial and organisational capacity, and is laying the foundation for long-term financial sustainability.

Challenge and Approach: A Product for Everyone

Many local media organisations face the same challenge: people care about what's happening where they live, but that doesn't automatically mean they'll engage with local journalism on a regular basis. "That's not because people are unwilling," says founder Philipp Schwörbel, who leads product, growth, fundraising, and community at loky*. "It's often because of the product itself." Many existing offerings are too noisy, too overwhelming, or simply not relevant enough because they are still shaped primarily by traditional editorial thinking.

Loky* takes a different approach. Rather than trying to persuade people that local journalism matters – for themselves or for democracy – the product itself should become so useful that it naturally earns a place in people's everyday lives. "We're creating a product for everyone," says Schwörbel. loky* is not trying to reach highly engaged progressive audiences, nor those who fundamentally reject journalism. Instead, it is focusing on the broad middle ground between those two groups.

The strategic assumption is straightforward: if loky* develops its local journalism as a newsletter built consistently around the needs and feedback of its community, subscriber numbers will grow, engagement will remain high, and paid memberships can eventually emerge from that community. At this stage, newsletter subscribers are the primary KPI. The team has set the following milestones:

• 3,500 by the end of February 2026
• 7,000 by the end of August 2026  
• 14,000 by the end of February 2027 

Newsletter growth thus becomes the measurable foundation for the next stage of the business model.

Implementation and Decisions: Community as a Product Principle

The most important product decision the two founders made was not to treat the newsletter as just another distribution channel. At loky*, it is the product. Published twice a week, the newsletter combines a personal tone, well-researched local reporting, brief updates, community contributions, and practical everyday tips. If something can be said briefly, it is. Topics that continue to resonate with readers are revisited. loky* does not see its readers as an audience that only consumes finished content. "Our readers are our best source of story ideas. They know better than anyone what's relevant to them – they suggest the vast majority of our topics," says founder Juliane Schader, who leads the editorial team. "In many ways, they're the ones shaping our editorial agenda." To make this possible, every newsletter includes clear calls to action: What do you think? What tips do you have? What should we know? Responses arrive via email or through an anonymous tip box. Some become letters to the editor, others are added to the editorial Trello board, and still others lead directly to investigations or short news stories. "Our policy is that everyone gets a response," says Schader. "And not just a standard reply – we engage with people, their needs, and their ideas as equals." She estimates that around 80 percent of story ideas originate from the community. This creates a different understanding of relevance. It doesn't begin with the traditional journalistic question, "What's new?" Instead, it starts with: "Why does this matter?"

Once the product and community logic were firmly in place, loky* invested more heavily in communication and audience growth. Today, newsletter subscribers come from three main channels:

• Organic growth through search and word of mouth
• Local posters
• Meta Ads 

The local posters are particularly striking: an offline gateway to a digital product. General awareness posters promote the newsletter, while others focus on specific neighbourhood issues – for example, barbecue season and the smoke and odour it brings. A QR code leads directly to the newsletter sign-up page. Meta Ads serve the same purpose online, directing users from Instagram and Facebook to dedicated landing pages or directly to the website. The next step is intentionally kept simple: enter your email address, and you're done. At this stage, the goal is not to sell memberships, but to build a direct relationship through the newsletter first.

Another key part of the approach is the willingness to change course quickly when assumptions prove wrong. An early experiment with separate newsletters for different neighbourhoods showed within just four to six weeks that many readers subscribed to several editions because their daily lives don't follow administrative boundaries. As a result, loky* decided to publish a single newsletter covering a larger loky* region. Another experiment was a Thursday long-form newsletter featuring an in-depth story of the week. While the idea made sense from a traditional editorial perspective, it didn't fit the product logic. "We always say we're a community; we're a conversation. Except on Thursdays," Juliane Schader recalls with a smile. Instead, Thursdays became: "We've done research – here comes a wall of information." While some readers appreciated the format, many found it overwhelming. The team therefore discontinued it and instead chose to develop larger stories over several newsletter editions while staying closer to readers' ongoing feedback.

As the organisation grew, it also became clearer what kind of company loky* wanted to build. The founders weren't just looking to hire more reporters. They wanted to build a core team that truly understood their distinctive way of working. That created new challenges after the first hires joined. The product itself was still evolving, and introducing new colleagues to the loky* approach while simultaneously expanding into new neighbourhoods proved demanding. "It was simply too much to handle," recalls Philipp Schwörbel. In response, loky* redesigned both its recruitment and onboarding processes. Greater emphasis is now placed on systematically introducing new colleagues to the company's way of working so they can take on responsibility more quickly, allowing the founders to focus on strategic development. The recruitment process has also evolved, including the introduction of paid trial workdays. "They were incredibly valuable," says Juliane Schader, "because they showed us what really motivates people." The hiring process became a lesson in scaling. For loky*, traditional journalistic skills alone are not enough. Team members need to combine speed, strong editorial judgement, community thinking, and a newsletter-first mindset. The company looks for people who bring experience while remaining open to new ways of working.

Impact: Faster Growth Than Planned

loky* is successfully navigating its first growth phase. By the end of February, newsletter subscribers had already exceeded the target of 3,500 by a considerable margin. The next milestone was also reached ahead of schedule: instead of the planned 7,000 subscribers by the end of August, loky* had already reached 8,450 by the end of June. As a result, the newsletter community is growing faster than anticipated. Before active marketing began, subscriber numbers grew by around three percent per month. Since January, monthly growth has reached as much as 30 percent.

According to loky*, around 10 percent of this growth is organic. The remaining growth comes almost equally from its two paid acquisition channels: local posters and Meta Ads, each accounting for roughly 45 percent. The team has also gained a much clearer understanding of what works. Based on its experience, Schwörbel estimates that distributing 200 posters generates around 40 to 50 new newsletter subscribers. That translates into an acquisition cost of approximately €1.50 to €2.00 per subscriber – a strong benchmark.

The engagement data shows that loky* isn't simply collecting email addresses; it's building lasting relationships with its readers. According to the team's own figures, the average open rate is around 65 percent. Nearly 90 percent of subscribers interact with the product every month – for example by opening or clicking on the newsletter. This doesn't even include replies sent directly to the editorial team. Schwörbel describes the community as "consistently active." Whether this engagement will ultimately translate into paid memberships remains to be seen, as the active membership campaign has not yet begun.

Organisationally, the company is also entering a new phase. At the end of June, following several personnel changes, the team was fully staffed for the first time since November. That provides a stable foundation, even though expanding the organisation remains part of the ongoing scaling process.

Key insights

What makes loky* transferable isn't any single tactic, but the way the team makes decisions: closely aligned with users' needs, consistently focused on direct relationships, and willing to abandon formats when they no longer fit the product. Several lessons stand out:

• Treat the community as a source of story ideas, not simply a comments section. Collecting feedback isn't enough – what matters is systematically integrating it into editorial planning, reporting, and product development.
• Make the newsletter the product, not just a mailing list. At loky*, the newsletter is the primary space where relationships with users are built. "Newsletter first – and actually, newsletter only", says Philipp Schwörbel. The website supports the product but remains secondary.
• Build the product before building the funnel. Posters, Meta Ads, and sign-up pages only work when they're backed by a product that people immediately understand and genuinely want to use. Growth can only be scaled once the product itself has proven its value.  
• Local distribution doesn't have to be digital. Posters work because they're local, context-specific, and closely connected to everyday life. For hyperlocal media, offline distribution can be a highly effective acquisition channel when paired with a simple digital funnel.
• Be willing to abandon formats that don't fit the product. Separate district newsletters and a long-form Thursday edition were both sensible ideas – but loky* adapted or discontinued them because they no longer supported the product's core objective.
• Hire for product thinking, not just journalism. Building new journalistic products requires more than excellent writing. Teams also need to understand users, community dynamics, prioritisation, speed, and a newsletter-first mindset.
• Prioritisation is part of the product. With a small team covering a large area, loky* deliberately focuses only on the stories that matter most. As Juliane Schader puts it, the key question isn't "Can we cover everything?" but "What's truly important to a large number of people?" 

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Author: Alexander von Streit, journalist and strategy consultant – on behalf of the VOCER Institut für Digitale Resilienz
Photo: Media Forward Fund / Ivo von Mühlenen
Film: Sympathiefilm

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Last updated: July 28, 2026