In our first year, nearly 200 newsrooms shared more than 10,000 stories through Plucky Wire. Building the tool to make that possible has been equal parts exhilarating and humbling, marked by real progress, false starts, and regular recalibration. This post is a candid look at how far we've come and what we've learned along the way.
For those of you who are just hearing about us for the first time... At Plucky Works, we build practical editorial software that helps small and mid-sized newsrooms collaborate and increasingly, earn real revenue from that collaboration. We're here to make small newsrooms stronger and more economically resilient. I personally love working with small and scrappy newsrooms, like the ones in my home state of New Hampshire, and it's been super fun working with like-minded editors across the country over the last year.
Looking Back at 2025
Last year, we shared our 10,000th story and welcomed nearly 200 newsrooms to Plucky Wire. Along the way, we were named the top NewsTech startup at the Next Challenge for Media and Journalism, partnered with MuckRock, led workshops at INN Days and SRCCON, and worked with multiple public universities to help them stand up statewide content-sharing systems.
Each of these successes came with many more challenges, of course. We've tried dozens and dozens of terrible ideas, most of which, thankfully, were shot down by the editors at our partner newsrooms before they ever went public. We're still tweaking our business model for each of our tools, trying new ways to help small newsrooms at prices that any business can afford while allowing us to scale up our own operations and serve more newsrooms nationwide. I can't say that we've "figured it all out" yet, but we've learned a lot and have made some huge steps forward.
In order to do all this, we shipped multiple major improvements to Plucky Wire, including simpler onboarding, automated daily and weekly story digests, and the Open Library, making it easier for small newsrooms to find and reuse stories published under Creative Commons licenses. Behind the scenes, we expanded our technical team and made more than 2,000 minor upgrades so the platform can scale smoothly as more newsrooms join.
As someone who learned how to code later in life because I had investigative questions I needed to answer, I have been so grateful to the professional coders who work with me now. They have significantly improved the quality of our codebase and given us, as a company, the confidence to rapidly expand what we do.
What’s Coming in 2026
2026 is already shaping up to be even busier and more ambitious.
We’re preparing to launch two brand-new tools, bring hundreds more newsrooms onto the platform, and focus heavily on something I care deeply about: helping newsrooms turn collaboration into sustainable revenue. Our goal is simple: every newsroom that uses Plucky tools should be financially stronger because of it. We're now prototyping tools that will let small newsrooms earn additional revenue by offering their readers and local businesses brand new editorial products.
I'm sure there will be lots of frustrating obstacles we need to overcome as we roll those tools out, but I'm really excited to see it how it goes. If they work, and that's a big if, they could make small newsrooms significant revenue. This is absolutely worth shooting for. If Plucky's tools are ever powerful enough that they give small newsrooms the extra revenue needed to hire new reporters, even if just part-time, I will be so very happy.
Learn More
If you’d like to dig deeper into our tools, you can explore our newly launched User Guides. If you’d like to see any of our tools in action, feel free to reach out. I’m always happy to set up a demo or training. If you'd like to get a virtual coffee to trade half-baked ideas about how to help tiny newsrooms, I'd love to. Send me an email at johnny@pluckyworks.org
Thanks for following along. More soon.
— Johnny
Founder & CEO, Plucky Works