Notes on building local media in Charlotte and Farmington
We Built Our Own, No. 20. The Charlotte Mercury got new type on October 9, chosen for reading rather than looks. The research says no font fits everyone, so the size is now the reader's to set.
Peter Cellino·Oct 9, 2026
We Built Our Own, No. 19. If somebody has to remember to update a page, it's going to go stale. So we stopped typing the page.
Peter Cellino·Oct 2, 2026
We Built Our Own, No. 18. We renamed a section "Town Hall" and readers landed on a federal sentencing. Fixing it meant moving 203 stories without breaking a link.
Peter Cellino·Oct 2, 2026
We Built Our Own, No. 17. 133 plain-language fixes across three sites, made once, from one place.
Peter Cellino·Sep 27, 2026
We Built Our Own, No. 16. A publication as a source, not a destination.
Peter Cellino·Sep 26, 2026
We Built Our Own, No. 15. What I decided, what the machine built, what it got wrong.
Peter Cellino·Sep 26, 2026
We Built Our Own, No. 14. A new publication is a row in a table and a DNS record.
Peter Cellino·Sep 25, 2026
We Built Our Own, No. 13. Every article, page, person, transcript and image, in one place.
Peter Cellino·Sep 25, 2026
We Built Our Own, No. 12. Rules that fire whether or not anyone remembers.
Peter Cellino·Sep 21, 2026
We Built Our Own, No. 11. 11,357 objects mirrored off-site, and a restore drill that matched every hash.
Peter Cellino·Sep 20, 2026
We Built Our Own, No. 10. Dozens of watchdogs. The first run found six problems nobody knew about.
Peter Cellino·Sep 19, 2026
We Built Our Own, No. 09. 542 milliseconds to 208. Measure before you optimize.
Peter Cellino·Sep 18, 2026
We Built Our Own, No. 08. Thousands of public profiles, built from the coverage.
Peter Cellino·Sep 17, 2026
We Built Our Own, No. 07. Thousands of sourced claims, one per sentence that needs one.
Peter Cellino·Sep 16, 2026
We Built Our Own, No. 06. We self-hosted our own. Ten days later it took every site down.
Peter Cellino·Sep 15, 2026
We Built Our Own, No. 05. Version two, seven blocks, one day.
Peter Cellino·Sep 14, 2026
We Built Our Own, No. 04. One send path for every domain. No tracking sold to anyone.
Peter Cellino·Sep 13, 2026
We Built Our Own, No. 03. 1,006 images repointed in one sitting, and why permissions won.
Peter Cellino·Sep 12, 2026
We Built Our Own, No. 02. 813 articles, 7,124 images, one platform. Built by one publisher and an AI.
Peter Cellino·Sep 11, 2026
We Built Our Own, No. 01. Where Mercury Local started, and why it could not stay there.
Peter Cellino·Sep 10, 2026
Two publications cover the same Farmington, Connecticut police arrest log. One publishes weekly with five data fields and a wall of ads.
Peter Cellino·Apr 14, 2026
The local news industry got both halves of the attention equation wrong. Mercury Local is built to get them right.
Peter Cellino·Mar 30, 2026
A single article attracts attention. Coverage accumulates it. The difference is the distance between a reader who found you once and a reader who comes back.
Peter Cellino·Mar 29, 2026
Every local news site looks the same — and sounds the same. The real competitive advantage isn't your CMS template. It's a documented editorial voice enforced at the production level.
Peter Cellino·Mar 28, 2026
Facebook traffic went to zero. Google is next. AI doesn't even click through. The entire model of "we publish, someone else sends us readers" is ending as a category — and the publishers who built…
Peter Cellino·Mar 27, 2026
WordPress VIP's CTO runs a 200-person enterprise division serving News Corp, NASA, and the White House. Mercury Local runs three publications with one publisher.
Peter Cellino·Mar 26, 2026
The fire marshal closed the gates Friday night, and the festival had reopened by Saturday morning.
Peter Cellino·Sep 13, 2025
Nearly three-quarters of the ballots came in the last five days, led by University City Library with 2,965.
Peter Cellino·Sep 7, 2025
Coffee, Cursor, Chaos — It's 10:30 on the Friday before Labor Day.
Peter Cellino·Aug 29, 2025
Public testimony is short by design, and the best speakers arrive with one point, one example and a clear ask.
Peter Cellino·Aug 25, 2025
We believe informed voters are the point. We publish political coverage because elections are where public life becomes real.
Peter Cellino·Aug 23, 2025
Mercury Local uses AI to transcribe council debates, flag budget anomalies and archive public records, never to impersonate reporting.
Peter Cellino·Aug 19, 2025
What Sets Our Election Hub Apart — Charlotte voters heading into the 2025 municipal races have no shortage of election coverage.
Peter Cellino·Aug 19, 2025
Local news should feel like a front porch, not a data auction.
Peter Cellino·Aug 18, 2025
Premium isn't paywalled — it's verifiable reporting, a calm page, and a clear route from curiosity to casting a ballot.
Peter Cellino·Aug 12, 2025
This Week at Mercury Local: What We Published and Why It Matters. We build for trust, not clicks.
Peter Cellino·Aug 8, 2025
Why click-driven media failed—and what we're building instead.
Peter Cellino·Aug 6, 2025
Charlotte Voter Guides: Listing Names vs Explaining Power.
Peter Cellino·Aug 5, 2025
The Week We Earned the Tagline. Some weeks, you publish news. This week, we published news that matters.
Peter Cellino·Aug 2, 2025
Note from the Publisher — The Attention Economy Is a Lemon. Here's Why We're Not Selling It.
Peter Cellino·Jul 27, 2025
The Money Hole — Google and Facebook now take 63 percent of U.S. digital ad spend.
Peter Cellino·Jul 7, 2025
We Open the Doors Today. Charlotte Mercury hits send this morning. No paywall, no tracking pixels.
Peter Cellino·Jul 5, 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.
Peter Cellino·Jul 2, 2025
A Penny Bought Attention, Not News. Benjamin Day launched the New York Sun in 1833 at one cent.
Peter Cellino·Jun 13, 2025
The Lights Are On, but Nobody's Home. Walk into the Hartford Courant newsroom and you'll hear more echoes than phone rings.
Peter Cellino·Jun 13, 2025
The Deal Playbook — Private-equity firms do not buy newspapers for journalism. They buy distressed cash flow.
Peter Cellino·Jun 13, 2025
