The Post & Courier of Charleston, South Carolina was in dire straights. Its traditional revenue streams — print advertising and circulation — were in decline and the newspaper needed to find a way to reverse that trend — and fast.

The Post & Courier's solution, according to Executive Editor Mitch Pugh, was to take a mini-publisher approach, which mobilized the editorial and sales teams into creating new content products in areas like food, politics and real estate. Over two years, the initiative generated almost $900,000 in new product revenue and increased digital subscriptions by 250 percent.

In April, Pugh wrote a report for the American Press Institute's Better News Initiative to share some of the lessons The Post & Courier's staff learned by adopting its mini-publisher model.