If you’re a regular or even occasional reader of Davidson Local, you’ve probably been struck by publisher Antionette Kerr’s powerful columns, her playful sense of humor and her deep knowledge of the local people, places and history in and around Davidson County. In “Country Come to Town”, Kerr writes “we don’t just cover stories here, we live them.”

“I’d lived in bigger cities, traveled for work, met colleagues who said things like ‘circle back’ and ‘let’s ideate.’ But here, the news breaks in church foyers, barber chairs, and the checkout line at Food Lion. Here, ‘country’ isn’t an insult — it’s an identity,” said Kerr. “Storytelling doesn’t just happen on deadlines; it happens at the intersection of memory and change. It happens in the laughter between ‘you ain’t gon’ believe this’ and ‘write that down.’”

Davidson Local is marking its fifth anniversary in April. Since launching in 2021, Kerr has steadily built a devoted audience and passionate roster of contributors who balance “the tradition of front-porch storytelling and the pace of modern journalism.” 

The free, hyper-local news outlet covers education, elections, health and safety, and fact checks misinformation that circulates on social media. They spotlight community elders, local professionals and aspiring leaders. And while they also keep a close eye on local government, Lexington’s Mayor is a regular reader and supporter.

“It has been and continues to be a daily source of information for our local residents,” said Mayor Jason Hayes. “It’s the combination of what’s relevant, what you need to know about, also what is interesting from a human interest [perspective] to be more connected to your community… and I see them continuing to be an extremely viable source of information and news moving forward.”

Ahead of Davidson Local’s fifth anniversary, I chatted with Co-Founder and Publisher Antionette Kerr about their origins, adapting to information needs, their role in facilitating community conversations and the everyday challenges faced by local news start-ups. 

Want to help celebrate with Davidson Local? They’re throwing a “big old journalism party” for all the local news nerds April 23rd, 6-9 pm at Fox & Olive in Lexington, 100 Main Street.

Could you share a little bit about the origin story of Davidson Local? What gaps were you looking to fill in Davidson County? 

I’ve worked with a lot of the major legacy media sources, and I saw us moving away from local media. So I wanted to maintain that, and I thought that Davidson Local would be a great way to fill a gap. My co-founder, Kassaundra, and I saw that we were bringing information to the legacy media sources that they didn’t know about. We weren’t able to write about it. We would offer to write it on our own time, and we weren’t encouraged to pursue those stories, just parts of our communities that weren’t being covered. 

And we had a good friend who is a historic person involved with the civil rights movement, and she said, “I think y’all need to start your own thing,” We were lovingly released from our responsibility with the legacy source. And we were able to branch out with community support.

This year, you’re marking the fifth anniversary of Davidson Local. Tell us a little bit about some of the things that you’ve learned along the way about the community’s information needs.

People have really embraced our community stories. We sprinkle those in between stories on voting registration deadlines and candidates filing. We have been able to balance our news between the really serious political stuff that we need to respond to, like what did the county do with the opioid settlement funds and Ms. Mattie Terry died last week and she was a beloved teacher’s assistant that probably didn’t receive an award, but should have for all she did for children. So I think that we’ve realized that the public wants both of those things and we really need to sprinkle that in. 

What we didn’t expect is to be 411 for folks. So when we publish a story about school closings or garbage collection changes, people actually call us and ask us for details. For example, last week, I spent a day calling municipalities to see when they’re open, what the trash collection schedule will be. I really would love for them to just send us a press release so we can get it out to the folks. 

Also we don’t have enough Spanish translation for our community. We have a growing population of people that English is not their first language. There are words that do not exist in both languages, and we are really challenged with trying to translate information, especially when the municipalities say that they would do it when they accept certain grants or projects or funds. School systems in particular are really struggling with that because they have parents that don’t understand the language. 

You all recognized this and last year, started to translate some of your content. Can you share a little bit about the community partnership that’s helping provide more of this news and information in Spanish?

We began a partnership with the nonprofit Latino Association of Davidson County and they have developed a for-profit arm out of that. The Latino Association is a nonprofit. They partner with a for-profit arm Puente Solutions, which is about building bridges. Through our partnership, they learned that there was a larger need for translation.

As they translated for us, other folks did come back and say, can you translate for us too? So they were able to generate a business and create a business around translation services. That’s been a really great relationship. And they will translate stories that are pressing and relevant. We haven’t translated every story. Eventually we’d like to have a separate interaction for the Latino community, to be able to go in and just have a different experience. 

Davidson Local is also very visible in the community and organizes a lot of community engagement initiatives and events. Could you share a bit about some of those and the impact? 

I’m a local news nerd, I brand myself as that and have for the past 30 years. And two events really surprised me. We had a community conversation with Michael Hewlett, who is with The Assembly and was formerly with The Winston-Salem Journal. A lot of people remember his crime reporting ’cause he’s a rock star on crime reporting. And I lean on him for his expertise. He came and had a community conversation with us and we had a pretty good turnout, about 50, for that. I was like, “Wow, this many people want to have a community conversation about local journalism in Davison County.”

So that was a really great event. And then we had a screening of the American Coup documentary in partnership with Working Films, part of the funding came from the North Carolina News Lab Fund. And we really had an amazing turnout for that. We had it in the Civic Center. We had 10 organizations that signed on to co-sponsor it.

I was quite worried. The first thing that happened during the Wilmington massacre was that they went in and burned down The Daily Record, a Black-owned newspaper. So it was really important for Davison Local to host that conversation because we are a Black-owned news organization and we are here to present stories that might shift a narrative in a community that could be very similar to Wilmington in that time. 

And so that was just wild for us, that so many people were interested in the conversation. We had more than 100 people come out. That was impressive, especially for our community to have these conversations. They came to the screening and then we had a really great conversation afterwards with a panel and it included past civil rights leaders, we included the museum. Then we had a Black maker’s market. Because we were like, okay, they burned down Black-owned businesses during the Wilmington Coup, but here are some that you can support now. I don’t like leaving a conversation with “this is sad and awful and tragic.” So people came out and supported it in a great way.

Could you share a little bit about your staffing and business model? I know you have a lot of very passionate people volunteering their time. What does the team at Davidson Local look like and how are you bringing in funds to support the operation? 

I think that’s been the biggest challenge for us, and in my conversations with the NC Sustainability Accelerator, I know I’m not the only news organization dealing with that. I feel like we run out of money, before people run out of passion.

That is a challenge for us because people come in and they’re like, “We believe in what you’re doing. We’re excited. We know you don’t have a lot of money.” But people have to feed their children and pay their light bills. And I have been willing to sacrifice. 

That’s why I keep joining revenue cohorts and hopping on calls because I’m like, “How does this really work? When you still have passion and the money runs out, what does that really look like?” Yeah, I don’t have an answer. I hope somebody out there does, but I don’t have it right now.

What does your revenue pie look like? 

We do have advertising. We have philanthropic funds, and individual donors. Right now I’m interviewing Community Journalism Champions. If you give over a certain amount of money, you become a Community Journalism Champion. And then we do a banner ad for them and they run on our page for an entire month to say, this person gave us a thousand dollars this month so that you can have free local news. How about that? Let’s celebrate that. 

That doesn’t cover our entire expenses. We’re a lean and mean team, but expenses are about $3,000 to $5,000 per month. 

We have something we created called the Press Club. We give donors exclusive information and behind the scenes details, for example here’s what happened during this interview or this process, or here’s what we’re dealing with now. I put out a statement to the Press Club about Don Lemon’s arrest. That’s something that I might not share on Davidson Local, but I will share with the Press Club and share what we see and how that might impact all of our work and what we do. 

Everybody’s market is different and we have to figure out our market. But events work for us and one thing I learned is that we gain more revenue when we don’t charge for an event. People will bring checks. That’s just Davidson County and how we do things. Maybe it’s different elsewhere. Maybe other folks make money off of ticket sales. But for us, you come for free and people generously give when they are invited. 

It’s the five year anniversary of Davidson Local and the 30th anniversary of you being a journalist. How are you feeling about the state of local news and what have you learned along this journey that keeps you going? 

I have to go back to Steven Waldman. I don’t know if anyone’s following him on LinkedIn, but they should and Rebuild Local News. This is something that I thought was just a passion in my heart, but Steven gave me an opportunity to see that it’s not just here. It’s a big deal. 

If I could have one single quote—local news is where it’s at. If you can’t change what’s going on in any other place or DC, if you feel hopeless, we’ve been able to offer hope to people through local news. 

A lot of us saw that when the monks came through. They offered hope to people in a way that I haven’t seen in my lifetime. They came through our area and we covered it. But if we could just reflect on that moment where we can’t change the entire world, but these folks walking through our communities gave us something so special and so important. 

For me I feel like we are giving people hope in a way, and even if it’s discouraging, even if it’s by the way, your county’s not doing the thing that we would like for them to do. You can change that easily. Our city council is elected. Sometimes there’s a difference of 20 votes. So, the difference that you can make by informing people through local news gives me hope. I can’t change DC but in Davison County, we have some hope. 

What are you doing for your fifth anniversary? 

Right now we have something on the books for April 23rd, 6-9 pm at Fox & Olive in Lexington, 100 Main Street. We are gonna have a big old journalism party and all the local news nerds are coming out and we’re just gonna take over Main Street in a positive way. 

So we’ll be out there celebrating this local news thing that people said couldn’t exist. It has been a challenge, but we are still here. 

Republish This Story

Republish our articles for free, online or in print, under a Creative Commons license.