Come to Blue Engine Camp

Come to Camp!

A gathering for the courageous, ambitious local news leaders. Together, we will get shit done, have fun, and leave inspired to crush 2027.

Join us for three days in Durham, NC to build your local news business.

October 14–16, 2026Durham, NC

Come to Camp →

Get Shit Done · Have Fun · Leave Inspired✦

Why Camp

Why you'll love Blue Engine Camp.

The best Accelerator program ever

We're bringing the best people from the Blue Engine universe, and beyond, together in one place, at one time. It's going to be a ball.

Business-first

Sessions, workshops, and most importantly, everybody else in the room is ambitious about the business of local news.

Everybody's in this canoe

You'll talk, work, and explore with leaders who get things done: publishers, editors, CMOs, audience directors, product leaders, and analytics mavens. Attendance is capped to preserve depth, connection, and meaningful exchange.

Outcomes

Leave with a plan to crush 2027.

Participants leave with ideas and relationships that feed directly back into their organizations, including a clear plan for the five trends shaping local news next year.

Come to Camp →

01Building incredible email products→
02Making money with video→
03Becoming a marketing machine→
04Putting AI to work (for real)→
05Making the sale to advertisers and philanthropy→
+ so much more.

Schedule of Events✦

Three days in Durham

Schedule of events.

Wednesday

October 14

BlueLena Summit · 12–6 PM
Optional half-day gathering of BlueLena publishers.*
Newspack Summit · 12–6 PM
Optional half-day gathering of Newspack publishers.*
Evening welcome drinks & snacks
Boxcar. Pizza. Party. Two hundred people who immediately feel like they've found their people, because they have. The best icebreaker ever invented is standing next to someone at a pinball machine. No agenda. No keynotes. Just the first night of something good.

Thursday

October 15

Full-day conference
Sessions and workshops with the people building the business of local news.
Afternoon Field Trips
Camp sends attendees on curated visits to Durham businesses doing something worth studying. Live case studies in what it looks like when local wins.
Evening cocktail reception
Wind down together over drinks.

Friday

October 16

Brunch
Slow start, good coffee, real conversation.
Campfires
Small-group conversations on the questions that matter most to your business.
Expert-led workshops
Put your new ideas into motion alongside your new BFFs.

*BlueLena and Newspack publishers get these summits and Blue Engine Camp for only $100, thanks to The Lenfest Institute for Journalism.

Speakers

Meet our eminent Camp speakers.

Tim Griggs

Founder and CEO, Blue Engine Collaborative

Candice Fortman

Executive in Residence, Blue Engine Collaborative

Cierra Hinton

Director of Development, Blue Engine Collaborative

David Grant

General Manager, Partnerships Products & Strategy, Blue Engine Collaborative

Idalmy Carrera-Colucci

General Manager, People, Programs and Operations

More to come

Additional speakers and session leaders announced soon.

Testimonials✦

Can you prove it?

People love Blue Engine events.

Maybe the most valuable event I've attended in the past five years.

It was a nonstop learning experience, surrounded by other passionate local news leaders and market players.

I had so many great takeaways. It was refreshing to attend a conference focused on revenue generators for for-profit orgs!

I left with a lot of action steps that didn't feel overwhelming, because I had already started to put them in motion before leaving.

For You?

Are you a Camp kind of person?

If you have the courage to build an amazing local news business and the ambition to believe it can actually be done, we want you at Camp.

If you believe you'll better understand where to go next in conversation with other brilliant people who don't take themselves too seriously, we want you at Camp.

If you think your 2027 plan will be better with input from dozens of other people on the same journey, we want you at Camp.

You'll leave with unrivaled practical inspiration for your business, a head start on implementing it thanks to a Blue Engine coach, and you'll have a hell of a lot of fun with your courageous, ambitious peers.

Buy a ticket →

We're eager to answer your questions. Just email us at Hello@BlueEngineCollaborative.com.

Scenes from Camp

The room you actually want to be in.

Real conversations. Long dinners. Working sessions that go somewhere. Camp is hundreds of small moments that add up to a different way of running your business.