#29 - Thinkin: ‘Local Community Media’ as a ‘Trusted Club’

Originally published in The Times of India.

In this ThinkIn, I spent a couple of hours with old-school traders. Yes, they ran conventional businesses. But their business, oddly, felt more like highly profitable community media or local media products.

Who are they? Gujarati traders built enduring careers on a high-trust network in a low-trust environment. Shrewd and street-smart, they excel at understanding human nature, leveraging trust, and closing deals. Yet, they often sacrificed short-term gains to safeguard their reputation and relationships. If you’ve read Nassim Taleb’s The Black Swan or Antifragile, they embody the essence of Fat Tony in the best ways.

————

Recently, I found myself in a bind. I needed critical information, fast. But it felt like trying to solve a jigsaw puzzle in the dark. Every source I turned to came up short—vague answers, conflicting opinions, and zero clarity. I was stuck. Then I met Fat Tony.

Now, Fat Tony did something rare. He listened—closely. After a few thoughtful questions, he said, “Let me work on this and get back to you.” I didn’t expect much. But he delivered.

He turned into a detective. Fat Tony tracked down obscure sources, cross-checked every claim, and followed up relentlessly to clear up inconsistencies. He didn’t stop until he was sure—three independent confirmations for every fact. His questions even made me rethink what I was asking.

A week later, he handed me a crisp, two-page document. It wasn’t just well-organized. It was actionable. Fat Tony’s research didn’t just answer my questions—it uncovered angles and opportunities I’d never considered.?

And here’s the kicker: Fat Tony wasn’t an investigative journalist. He was my real estate agent. In fact, real estate agents, venture capitalists, stock brokers and journalists seem worlds apart, right? But in many ways, they thrive on the same skill: information arbitrage.

Why It Matters

For your audience: For the most important things in one’s life, people want the transaction to be mediated by a human being.

For the newsroom: If publishers can convince their community to buy something, it means they can earn directly or indirectly from the transaction.

• In traditional business terms, publishers can earn a commission.?
• In digital advertising terms, they can earn affiliate fees, cost per lead, cost per transaction, and so on.

But isn’t being a middleman a bad business? Only if you’re a rent seeker. As long as you’re helping your community make wiser decisions and making their lives more convenient, being a middleman isn’t bad. After all, Airbnb, Visa, and Kayak are all middlemen.

The Information Arbitrage Business

Information arbitrate businesses relies on investing in certain sensibilities:

1. Trust is the currency that underpins information arbitrage, and it’s earned through consistency, transparency, and value creation. You’ve to be an advocate for your audience. If you can’t trust the journalist, the story feels biased. If you don’t trust the real estate agent, every deal feels like a trap.?

2. Insight As A Service: Almost everyone has family, and the closest friends they make are often formed during childhood or later in college. No one joins a network or club solely to make connections or friends. The foundation of any connection should be based on what value you bring to the table. In information arbitrage businesses, this value lies in providing insights.

But how do you find an insight? You need to uncover hidden opportunities, recognize patterns others overlook, and connect the dots in ways that create value. The work shares a universal DNA:

• Novelty: Whether it’s a breaking story, an undervalued property, a promising stock, or a startup pitch, the new and unexpected always captures attention.
• Outliers: The extraordinary stands out—a company with an unconventional edge, a stock with unusual momentum, a property with unique charm, or a story no one else is telling.
• Trends: Success often comes from anticipating the next big thing—spotting the shifts before they become obvious to the rest of the world.
• Debunking: Challenging assumptions is key, whether it’s overturning a market myth, questioning a company’s trajectory, rethinking a neighborhood’s reputation, or exposing a flawed narrative.
• Forecasting: It’s not just about answers but providing clarity on what’s coming next—whether it’s the direction of a market, a sector, or a story’s unfolding impact.

3. Give Members Agency: ?The strength of any network lies in its participants. You’ve to give space for your community a voice or a platform to speak and do things.

4. A Catalyst for Transactions: All of this should lead somewhere — an outcome, i.e., bridge the gap between information and action. The best networks create value when they facilitate transactions.?

• People should want to sell via you.
• People should want to buy via you.

5. Member Mix: Ideally the community should be made up of interesting folks who do interesting things. Given this, it cannot be a monolith; there should be an appropriate balance of diversity in terms of gender, age, and other factors.?

The future of community newsrooms lies in becoming more than just an information provider. By positioning themselves as trusted middlemen—mediators of complexity, facilitators of trust, and engines of insight—newsrooms can unlock untapped potential. The goal isn’t just to deliver news; it’s to create a network that people can rely on for clarity, confidence, and connection.

This isn’t just a new role—it’s a competitive advantage. Because in a world full of noise, the real value lies in the quiet power of being the one people turn to when it matters most.

Let’s apply these ideas at a Community Newsroom

Let’s imagine a hypothetical publication catering to the growing Indian diaspora in New Zealand. The entire population of New Zealand is just a fraction of New Delhi’s population. Within this small population, the publication targets only the Indian diaspora—an exceptionally niche market. This focus makes the publication well-suited for community journalism.

Beyond the news and journalism, the newsroom should become the central place of trust where people collect, think, and act. Below are few ideas:

High Trust Classifieds

Run classifieds for Indian New Zealander professionals, their businesses, and organizations, and promote Indian New Zealanders to buy from fellow Indian New Zealanders. Focus on jobs that require high trust, expertise, and cultural affinity.?

• Intimate jobs like babysitting, tuition classes for Indic languages, religious education, and elderly care.?
• Jobs that require cultural understanding, for example, cooks and caterers, vastu consultants, interior decorators, dance teachers, astrologers, nutritionists, etc.
• Highly-skilled professionals who handle intimate jobs. They are typically in the health and wellness industry, for example, physiotherapists, psychologists, personal trainers, occupational therapists, marriage counselors, lactation consultants, midwives, etc. However, they could also come from other avenues, like divorce lawyers.
• You get the idea.

Indian New Zealanders for Indians

When someone first visits a new location, they are looking for familiarity, comfort, and safety. Partner with businesses run by Indian New Zealander to create packages that serve Indians coming to New Zealand.?

• Gift your parents a trip to New Zealand: A tour and travels package designed for those who wish to visit New Zealand but prefer not to step out of their comfort zone. Even though they might stay at the best of resorts, they travel with a Indian New Zealander tour guide in a bus, and they enjoy Indian vegetarian meals catered by restaurants run by Indian New Zealanders, among other conveniences.
• India House (Hostels and Tiffins): Hospitality and stay services for Indian students, backpackers, and entrepreneurs who first come to? New Zealand.
• You get the idea. Eventually, your goal is to become the first port of call for any newly arrived Indian in New Zealand.

Kickstarter of Indian products

There might be Indian products that Indian New Zealanders want but those products don’t sell in New Zealand. This creates an opportunity for you to become a middleman to bring those brands to New Zealand.?

• Indian New Zealanders Pull. List various products made in India on a Kickstarter like platform. Once Indian New Zealanders purchase a minimum quantity, then you take the effort of importing those products to India and distribute them to the people who purchased them. This is ideal for products of nostalgia or heritage, for example, handmade Indian weaves and sarees, snacks, ayurvedic products, etc.
• Push to Indian New Zealanders: Because of the D2C renaissance in India, the quality and uniqueness of products built in India is rising. Partner with these VC-funded companies to bring their companies to New Zealand.?

Invest in India

While New Zealand is a great place to live and work, high-growth investment opportunities are in India. This creates another high-trust information arbitrate opportunity to establish yourself as an agent or a financial services firm:

• Invest in unlisted stocks in India, like National Stock Exchange, Tata Capital, etc. Alternatively, find non-governmental bonds that give reasonably safe but assured returns.
• Invest in high-potential real estate deals that have high growth or rent potential
• Invest in high-growth Indian startups?
• Partner with Indian banks and financial institutions to invest in Fixed Deposits and Mutual Funds.

Summary

All the ideas underpinning this document are based on the same principles that drive digital advertising companies like Google and Meta. However, unlike them, you are not investing billions in AI. Your goal is to create a physical, in-person, human-to-human equivalent of a club where people want to sell and buy things.

Each time a transaction occurs, you earn a commission.?

How is this different from News and Journalism

News and journalism focus on presenting facts, shaping beliefs, and influencing public opinion.?

In contrast, the trusted club emphasizes actionable insights and facilitates direct action, such as transactions or skill-building. It prioritizes human connection and reliability over abstract information delivery.

Acknowledging Challenges

While the vision of newsrooms as trusted intermediaries facilitating transactions is compelling, the model is not without its challenges.

It does not directly align with traditional journalism but instead explores the psychological reasons why people trust journalists for information over social media. It extrapolates these insights to understand why individuals might rely on a human-to-human network for situations that are uncertain, high-stakes, and potentially irreversible.

This is a multi-decade strategy that demands patience, focus, and significant investment.

Throughout this journey, the trusted club must avoid maximizing revenue at the expense of trust. It often has to leave money on the table to prevent being perceived as a profit-driven business. If the perception shifts away from unbiased information and trust—the cornerstone of this model—its foundation could erode.

Finally, the success of this model depends on aligning with audience expectations. It requires repositioning the product to play a more integral role in the audience’s life than traditional news and journalism.

Want to republish it? This post was released under CC BY-ND — you can republish it as is with the following credit and backlinks: ‘Originally published by Ritvvij Parrikh on The Times of India. The author retains the copyright and any other ancillary rights to the post.