How Lodestar Media Doubled Its Pageviews and Drove 1.7M+ Views from Stacker — Without Pulling Reporters Off Local Journalism

The Challenge

Lodestar Media operates a network of community news sites across British Columbia, alongside lifestyle and business publications, each with its own local audience, editorial identity, and reporting priorities. Like most regional publishers, the network can face limited capacity for evening, weekend, and holiday coverage.

The challenge was finding a way to keep every market consistently publishing quality content during those windows without pulling reporters off the local stories that define each publication.

The Solution

Lodestar's relationship with Stacker began more than four years ago, inherited from a former colleague who had established the partnership as a source of evergreen content for coverage gaps. When Tereza Verenca took over as Director of Digital Content, she eventually made Stacker a non-negotiable part of her daily workflow.

"I made it my mission that every day — at least 5 days a week — we would have one Stacker item, around 7 or 8 p.m." — Tereza Verenca

The operational lift is minimal by design. In just a few clicks within Story Hub, Tereza can package a story in her CMS and publish it across markets that might otherwise have nothing new for readers to find that evening. The updated Story Hub interface, launched in February 2026, accelerated her usage further, giving her a faster way to scan trending content, surface hidden gems, and identify stories that would resonate across multiple Canadian markets in a single pass.

The content categories that anchor her selection process are straightforward: pets, personal finance, and seasonal wellness — stories that apply broadly across Canadian audiences without relying on U.S.-specific data or statistics. They also lean on explainers to help balance out local news content.

That balance is deliberate. Tereza spent years as a reporter herself, and she understands the pull that evergreen story ideas can have on a journalist's attention — and why protecting reporters from that pull is essential to the work.

"When I was a reporter, I remember thinking, 'These are great story ideas, but when will I get time to do all these? I have local news to attend to.' Stacker fills a gap that no one else is doing in our network." — Tereza Verenca

Editorial credibility was equally important to earning that daily slot.

Stacker content is sourced, reviewed, and non-opinionated. Tereza vets every story she publishes, checking authors and sourcing before anything goes live; however, in four-plus years of daily use, she has never found a reason to pull a Stacker story or question its standards.

Beyond routine weekly use, Stacker also comes in handy when life gets in the way. 

Consider holiday periods. At times like those, Stacker becomes even more central to the operation. Local markets can only reserve so much content for the days when people aren't working, but audiences still expect updated and refreshed articles. Stacker becomes the place publishers rely on to meet audience demands for freshness while still giving editors and reporters the much-deserved breaks they need.

The Results

Over four-plus years of partnership, Lodestar has driven more than 1.7 million estimated views from Stacker content across its network. The growth has accelerated as Tereza's daily publishing habit has taken hold: from January through May of 2026, Lodestar's pageviews from Stacker stories have more than doubled (+101%) year over year, unique stories published are up 54%, and average pageviews per pickup are up 42% — a signal that the team is not just publishing more, but publishing more effectively.

The individual results speak to the same point. A single Stacker story — "Do you cover your AC unit in the winter?" — has generated more than 432,000 page views across the Lodestar network. It surfaced through Story Hub, took only moments to publish, and continues to drive traffic as an evergreen asset.

Stacker stories that perform well earn a second life within the network. Tereza uses high-performing evergreen pieces as related links embedded in local stories — supporting recirculation, extending time on site, and giving reporters a ready resource when their coverage touches a broader topic.

Lodestar tracks performance across all content at the network level, with a running top-50 list updated monthly. When a Stacker story breaks into that list, the team takes it as confirmation that the content is doing what it was always intended to do: reaching Canadian readers with something worth reading, at exactly the moment they show up.

💬 Closing Thought

Lodestar's four-year relationship with Stacker has produced 1.7M+ network views, year-over-year pageview growth above 100%, and a newsroom whose reporters remain focused on the communities they were hired to serve. The arrangement works because of consistency, editorial fit, and the quiet operational discipline of a workflow that takes only a few clicks to repeat, day after day.

What sets the partnership apart from other wire services, in Tereza's view, comes down to support. Most newswire services hand over a login and disappear. Stacker treats every partnership as an ongoing relationship, with contacts she trusts who make time for real conversations and are available when questions arise.

"[What sets Stacker apart is] the face-to-face contact... That matters. So that's been really great... I really appreciate the personal touch of having this partnership." — Tereza Verenca

For newsrooms weighing the case for Stacker, Lodestar's experience offers a clear answer on three fronts: the editorial standards hold up to daily newsroom scrutiny, the return on a few clicks of work compounds dramatically over time, and the partnership itself is built to support the way real publishers actually operate.

It's a no brainer for the modern newsroom.