The Accelerator

The application deadline for the 2024 Local News Accelerator has passed. However, we will continue reviewing applications for future cohorts on a rolling basis. Apply here.

The inaugural Local News Accelerator cohort, composed of City Bureau, Crain’s Chicago Business, the Daily Herald, Illinois Answers Project, and La Raza, launched the Accelerator to national acclaim in 2023.

Early results:

• Crain’s is transforming a high-value but little-known premium news product into a core revenue-driver. Through its work in the Accelerator, Crain’s expects a revenue surge in 2024 that places this product at the heart of its business.
• The Daily Herald is on track to increase digital subscribers by 50% by the end of next year. It launched targeted newsletters for families in key suburbs that it identified through the Accelerator’s research analysis.
• La Raza is broadening its audience from a near-exclusive focus on first-generation, Spanish-speaking Chicagoans to second-generation, bilingual residents. The Accelerator supported La Raza in developing new digital strategies and building brand partnerships that are connecting it with younger audiences and diversifying its revenue streams. During the program, La Raza was named Best Spanish Weekly in the United States.

Over the course of the project, we track our partners’ mastery of five core competencies: research and insights, content strategy, business strategy, product development, and leadership development. Across all five organizations, participants demonstrated double-digit percent increases in each category in 2023.

Proven Process

Medill provides a structure, framework and financial resources proven to help news organizations achieve transformative performance results. Our system blends concepts from the Lean Startup, Continuous Discovery Habits, Measure What Matters, Human Centered Design, agile development, the Wisdom of Teams and more.

Powered by the quantitative and qualitative research capabilities of Northwestern University, partner organizations receive robust, bespoke research to inform their projects. Through the Accelerator, each partner taps into the wealth of knowledge across Northwestern — including our world-renowned business and engineering schools — and makes connections with subject-matter experts on our faculty and staff.

Over six months, organizations in the Accelerator design and conquer a project, or “challenge,” core to their mission – and bottom line. Each of the five teams gets a professional coach, who guides the organization through every stage of the challenge, ensuring goals are met and helping push through obstacles.

The teams work together as a cohort. Every six weeks, the cohort gathers to work, share resources and hold each other accountable for progress. These three C’s (challenge, coach and cohort) guarantee our success.