Readers turned to these local newspapers for real-time safety updates and weekend reads

According to Similarweb’s data, The Philadelphia Inquirer received 1.1 million more web visits in April than it did in March, about a 17% jump. Lisa Hughes, the Inquirer’s publisher and CEO, told me the spike coincided with the launch of Inquirer Weekend, “a key part of our content strategy to engage new readers over the weekend when we’d typically see traffic decline.” The audience development initiative introduced new recurring features like “Perfect Philly Day,” “Field Trip,” “Best Things We Ate,” “How I Bought This House,” and “Weekly Report Card,” which grades “the good, bad, and weird news coming out of the region (LeBron to Philly: A+, Flyers missing the playoffs, again: D-).” The Inquirer ran a paid marketing campaign to support the launch, which Hughes said engaged both new and current readers.

Pageviews increased across features, sports, business, and news content — “exactly the behavior we had hoped to drive,” Hughes said. The Inquirer is a for-profit public benefit corporation owned by the nonprofit Lenfest Institute; Hughes said the initiative was supported and accelerated by philanthropic underwriting.

Other local newspapers saw traffic gains driven by round-the-clock coverage of major stories. In California, The Orange County Register got 1.3 million more web visits in May than in April, a 54% jump. (The Register is part of Southern California News Group, which is owned by Alden Global Capital.) Toni Sciacqua, Southern California News Group’s managing editor for digital, attributed the spike to a big story right before Memorial Day about a chemical tank at threat of explosion in Garden Grove, prompting an unprecedented evacuation. The team drew from its breaking news playbook for wildfires, pushing out constant, timestamped updates that included language like “as of 2 p.m.” so people would know what was new since the last time they read. The Register sent newsletters throughout the day, updated social media posts, and scoured social media and Google search trends for questions the newspaper could answer. “Lots of people were looking for whether this would impact Disneyland,” Sciacqua said. “The answer was no, but we did stories specifically answering that question and saw a lot of interest in that.”

The team published evacuation zone maps that included local landmarks, shelters, and freeways. Simple explainers defining technical terms used by officials became some of the Register’s most-read stories. Once the team had a handle on the breaking news, investigative reporters did a deep dive into the company that owned the tank and looked for similar facilities in residential areas throughout California “to answer more questions readers outside the impacted area might have had, too,” Sciacqua said.

In Augusta, Georgia, both The Augusta Chronicle and The Augusta Press saw traffic spike by more than 50% in April. The Chronicle is a Gannett publication, and it’s one of a few around the country to see traffic upticks of more than 50% in the last few months, along with Florida Today and The Courier-Journal.