9 years for Heartland Newsfeed

People ask me on occasion how long Heartland Newsfeed has been around. When I tell them, they express some surprise.

The response usually goes one of two ways:

• “Really? Seems like it’s been around for much longer.”
• “Really? I didn’t know you existed!”

So, when do we become “all grown up”?

Heartland Newsfeed marks the beginning of its ninth anniversary this week. Our sister radio network, Heartland Newsfeed Radio Network, will mark the beginning of its seventh anniversary. Its sister station, Revolution Radio, will turn a year old next spring.

Last month, in a legal sense in regards to governmental paperwork, our parent company, Heartland Media Group of Central Illinois, marked five years in business as a taxable entity, although the business didn’t take off until two years later.

Like many independent media outlets, we’re still working hard to turn a profit, much like many startups struggle to do in the first years.

I would probably say something to the tune of, “We are successful, but we are not yet profitable.”

That’s because a lot of our business operating costs are no longer tied to the website hosting bill for Heartland Newsfeed or the hosting costs to broadcast our radio network anymore. We moved to a brick-and-mortar facility last fall, so there’s rent. We’ve operated a podcast network since 2020, so there are hosting costs as well. We opened a print shop in February, so there’s a lease for the copiers. We had to purchase office equipment for unfurnished spaces, so there’s a lease-to-own payment.

Most of this is covered by our delivery partner contract with Amazon Logistics to deliver in the Nokomis and Witt areas.

Business continues to boom month-to-month, and it is a significant change compared to nine years ago.

We are much further along than I anticipated back in 2016. Anything that I hoped to accomplish by its fifth anniversary in 2021 was long surpassed.

Many factors would help contribute to the success we have to date.

A huge thanks goes to the first major contributor to this website, fellow journalist and radio guy Ben Cox, who still contributes content from time to time. He is the news director of WLDS/WEAI in Jacksonville.

Another thanks goes to Jacob Hamm, whom I took a gamble on in the summer of 2024 to provide content on a semi-regular basis. Hamm, who is currently the news director at Eastern Illinois University’s The Daily Eastern News, continues to do good work for Heartland Newsfeed as he is able.

I know it hasn’t always been easy, but we’re weathering the storm, much like the rest of the independently-owned media outlets in this station and what remains in this nation.

Growth is good, but it’s the growing pains that sometimes hurt when, at some points in time, I may be the only person publishing content on the website (outside of our media partners that pay to publish content).

There is still a lot to improve on in the coming year, such as making a serious attempt at helping our businesses not only locally, but throughout the Bi-State Region when it comes to advertising and marketing.

We are a community-minded media outlet, despite being an outlet for so many communities whose stories are either undercovered, rarely covered, or not covered at all.

As other media outlets continue to shrink or change owners with the frequency that they change their socks, we have no plans to do that anytime soon. I am proud to be a full owner of this company and all of its assets, and I want to do my best to fulfill my mission of rewriting the narrative of journalism, media, and publishing that has been ravaged and diminished by corporations.

Happy ninth!