Amassing Attention, Locally
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
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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
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
A tiny electorate so far — As of the close of early voting, Mecklenburg County logged 13,871 ballots.
Peter Cellino·Sep 8, 2025
Why click-driven media failed—and what we're building instead.
Peter Cellino·Aug 7, 2025
Note from the Publisher — The Attention Economy Is a Lemon. Here's Why We're Not Selling It.
Peter Cellino·Jul 28, 2025
The Money Hole — Google and Facebook now take 63 percent of U.S. digital ad spend.
Peter Cellino·Jul 8, 2025
The Deal Playbook — Private-equity firms do not buy newspapers for journalism. They buy distressed cash flow.
Peter Cellino·Jun 14, 2025
A Penny Bought Attention, Not News. Benjamin Day launched the New York Sun in 1833 at one cent.
Peter Cellino·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.
Peter Cellino·Jun 14, 2025