Cityside brings local journalism directly to neighbors with Nextdoor

Cityside is a nonpartisan, nonprofit journalism organization in the Bay Area with three local news sites, Berkeleyside, The Oaklandside and Richmondside. Cityside is one of the 375 newsrooms in the Institute for Nonprofit News (INN) Network with a Nextdoor News account. Cityside created their Nextdoor News accounts Berkeleyside, The Oaklandside, and Richmondside in October 2024.

Why Nextdoor News

Cityside is committed to building community through local journalism and fostering civic engagement. As such, Cityside’s newsrooms are constantly looking for new ways to connect to the communities they serve. Cityside had been using Nextdoor for years prior to joining Nextdoor News in order to discover what locals were talking about on the neighborhood-level. Joining Nextdoor News intrigued Cityside for several reasons: 

1. They could more easily join conversations with local residents
2. They could share local stories directly with their communities 
3. They saw a potential to reach people who weren’t regular readers of their sites, especially in Richmond where they launched their Richmondside newsroom in 2024 

Cityside hoped to build authentic relationships with Nextdoor neighbors by providing reliable, trustworthy local news stories that are relevant and important to neighbors’ daily lives. 

The Oaklandside’s Nextdoor News Profile Page

Cityside’s goals

Cityside’s goals for its Nextdoor News account were to:

• Increase awareness among a Nextdoor’s hyper-local audience
• Drive qualified traffic to their website
• Enhance community engagement and foster direct dialogue with local residents

How Cityside uses Nextdoor

Cityside actively utilizes several Nextdoor News features, including:

• RSS feed feature, which automatically distributes news stories to local communities. Cityside has a small, but mighty audience team for its three newsrooms, so ease of use and simplicity are important considerations when Cityside creates a new account on any platform. The RSS feed made it super easy to get started.
• Comment threads, which has enabled Cityside to have direct dialogue with their community members about local stories. They’ve been able to answer neighbors' questions and collect feedback directly, fostering deeper connection.
• Publisher dashboard, which shows which topics and stories are getting the most attention in Citysides’ communities, helping them track performance and measure impact.

Richmondside’s Nextdoor News account publisher dashboard

Berkeleyside Nextdoor News post 

What Cityside achieved

Before creating a News account, Cityside typically saw a few hundred sessions a month from Nextdoor across its three news sites. Since launching their Nextdoor News account, Cityside has seen a substantial increase in sessions, now observing ~6,400 sessions monthly from Nextdoor across their sites. 

Each of Cityside's outlets have attracted hundreds of followers on Nextdoor—472 for Berkeleyside, 671 for Oaklandside, and 254 for Richmondside so far. 

Finally, Nextdoor consistently ranks as a top 5 referral source for Richmondside, showing excellent promise for the new publication.

Final thoughts

Alejandra Armstrong, Audience Engagement Editor at Cityside Journalism had this to say about the Nextdoor partnership:

“At Cityside, we’re always looking for new ways to keep our communities in Berkeley, Richmond, and Oakland informed. It makes sense to have a presence on Nextdoor — a platform that a number of residents already use. Through our publisher accounts on Nextdoor we are able to easily share our journalism to neighbors, shed light on issues and help provide valuable context to hyperlocal discussions.”

 — Alejandra Armstrong

Sam Cholke, Manager of Distribution and Audience Growth at INN agrees. “Local news from trusted sources like Cityside is critical for communities to talk about how to solve their shared problems,” Cholke said. “We’re excited that Nextdoor is bringing more local news to spaces online that are focused on people sharing information and ideas with their neighbors and other community members.”

Ready to reach your local community?

Create your free Nextdoor News account and engage with real, verified neighbors not found on other social platforms, drive local traffic to your site, and enjoy big rewards with little effort. Reach out to newshelp@nextdoor.com if you need any support getting started.