A Festival Declared Dead While It Was Very Much Alive
A Headline That Outlived Its Truth — By Sunday morning, Sept. 14, families were strolling through Panda Fest eating noodles and snapping selfies.
Sep 14, 2025
Built in Charlotte for Charlotte
Publisher, Mercury Local LLC
Publisher of Mercury Local, LLC and its family of hyperlocal news publications. Cellino launched The Charlotte Mercury to bring accountability-driven local journalism back to the neighborhoods that need it most.
A Headline That Outlived Its Truth — By Sunday morning, Sept. 14, families were strolling through Panda Fest eating noodles and snapping selfies.
Sep 14, 2025
A tiny electorate so far — As of the close of early voting, Mecklenburg County logged 13,871 ballots.
Sep 8, 2025
Coffee, Cursor, Chaos — It's 10:30 on the Friday before Labor Day.
Aug 30, 2025
I like the quiet before a meeting starts. You hear mic checks, papers line up, and a dozen Charlotte stories take a breath.
Aug 26, 2025
We believe informed voters are the point. We publish political coverage because elections are where public life becomes real.
Aug 24, 2025
What Sets Our Election Hub Apart — Charlotte voters heading into the 2025 municipal races have no shortage of election coverage.
Aug 20, 2025
The Nieman Lab recently published a look at Good Daily, a one-man operation flooding inboxes across 355 U.S. towns with AI-generated newsletters.
Aug 20, 2025
Local news should feel like a front porch, not a data auction.
Aug 19, 2025
Premium isn't paywalled — it's verifiable reporting, a calm page, and a clear route from curiosity to casting a ballot.
Aug 13, 2025
This Week at Mercury Local: What We Published and Why It Matters. We build for trust, not clicks.
Aug 9, 2025
Why click-driven media failed—and what we're building instead.
Aug 7, 2025
Charlotte Voter Guides: Listing Names vs Explaining Power.
Aug 6, 2025
The Week We Earned the Tagline. Some weeks, you publish news. This week, we published news that matters.
Aug 3, 2025
Note from the Publisher — The Attention Economy Is a Lemon. Here's Why We're Not Selling It.
Jul 28, 2025
The Money Hole — Google and Facebook now take 63 percent of U.S. digital ad spend.
Jul 8, 2025
We Open the Doors Today. Charlotte Mercury hits send this morning. No paywall, no tracking pixels.
Jul 6, 2025
Friction Everywhere—Except Here. Every hour I hop between half a dozen news sites—and each one makes me agree to cookies before I see a headline.
Jul 3, 2025
The Deal Playbook — Private-equity firms do not buy newspapers for journalism. They buy distressed cash flow.
Jun 14, 2025
A Penny Bought Attention, Not News. Benjamin Day launched the New York Sun in 1833 at one cent.
Jun 14, 2025
The Lights Are On, but Nobody's Home. Walk into the Hartford Courant newsroom and you'll hear more echoes than phone rings.
Jun 14, 2025