Exclusive: Nextdoor courts local journalists with verified accounts

The big picture: Nextdoor made news a core part of the redesigned app it released last year.

• Led by co-founder Nirav Tolia, who stepped down as CEO in 2018 and then came back as CEO in 2024, the company has sought to boost its flagging stock price by making the product more of a daily utility.
• "We talk internally about if it's happening in your neighborhood, it's on Nextdoor, and we've got to live up to that promise," Nextdoor executive vice president, product Nick Lisher says.
• "Local news is one of the most important things that we can bring neighbors to discuss on the platform," he adds.

By the numbers: Nextdoor's local news tab features more than 4,000 vetted publishers, including Axios. The platform distributes around 110,000 articles per week.

• News appears in more than a quarter of sessions and has become one of the top reasons "people say they love Nextdoor," Lisher says.
• Per Pew Research, 33% of Nextdoor users said they regularly get news there in 2025, up from 23% in 2022.

Zoom in: By joining the program, local journalists receive verified profiles with a checkmark. They can maintain a separate personal account.

• Posts on the verified account can reach a defined geographic region, meaning an entire metropolitan area instead of just one neighborhood.
• Verified journalists can search conversations across their designated market area and see those posts in their feed. They can send direct messages to neighbors who have that featured turned on.

Between the lines: Nextdoor is betting that local news engagement can improve when reporters are involved, not just with outlets posting.

• "I think a neighbor is far more likely to involve themselves directly with the journalist than they are necessarily with a publisher," Lisher says. "We see the journalist as being much more conversational."
• Nextdoor ran a three-month pilot test with more than 75 journalists from outlets like Dallas Morning News, Fort Worth Star-Telegram and Denver Gazette. Sourced stories included controversy over a rainbow sidewalk in San Antonio and proposed BART station closures in San Francisco.

Zoom out: Nextdoor timed this release with Local News Day, a new initiative led by Montana Free Press founder John Adams to celebrate and support local journalism.

• "The goal [is] recapturing the public's attention on local news and maybe turning away for a minute from some of the national narratives and the international news that is so easily accessible and pay more attention to what's right in front of us," Adams says.
• "The day is all about reconnecting people to local news," Marika Lynch, communications director at Press Forward, which is one of the day's sponsors. "We want people to subscribe. We want people to donate. We want people to call up a reporter and say, 'Thank you for that story.'"

What's next: Nextdoor plans to gradually expand access to local journalist accounts.