Don’t Miss Media Group (DMMG) founder Georgina Wilson-Powell, in the UK, has led the implementation of AI across production, commercial and operational infrastructure, which has helped the business scale far beyond what she could have managed alone. Here’s where AI implementation has worked in the business, and where their red lines are.
DMMG is a publishing network of three weekly hyperlocal newsletters operating across the English south east coastal towns of Margate, Ramsgate and Broadstairs. Each edition curates what’s on, where to eat, and what the community needs to know.
Wilson-Powell has implemented AI across editorial production, commercial and operational infrastructure, and for strategic and financial planning, allowing the small team to operate well beyond what would otherwise be possible.
At MediaVoices’ The Publisher Summit, she joined us on stage to talk through where in the business they use AI, crucial red lines, and how it has enabled them to scale event listings, ad management and more. Listen to the full interview below, or search for ‘The Publisher Podcast’ wherever you listen to podcasts.
DMMG was started by Wilson-Powell after she moved to Margate, in Kent, and struggled to connect to local people and events: “I just kept running into the same problem, which was missing events, missing community groups, feeling stuck at home, feeling like I didn’t know my community, and I kept [wracking] my brains about how to fix this,” she outlined. “The solution is a newsletter, and to go back to basics and do things like listings, what’s on, cultural news, and put that local media layer back in.”
‘Don’t Miss Margate’ was launched in October 2023 as a weekly what’s on guide. As subscriber numbers snowballed, Wilson-Powell introduced a voluntary paid subscription offer for £4 / month in early 2024. DMM is on track to hit £85k in annual revenue for 2026, helped by 150+ paying subscribers and healthy advertising revenue.
‘Don’t Miss Ramsgate’ followed in 2025, with ‘Don’t Miss Broadstairs’ joining in April 2026 as the hyperlocal network expanded once again. “In our second and our third towns, we’ve had people pay to subscribe before we’ve even launched because they just want to support their local community,” Wilson-Powell explained. “They don’t have anything like this, they want to show their support and see it grow.”
Wilson-Powell shared that DMMG now has over 6k subscribers across the three English resort towns, and are already reaching 15% of working-age people in those areas. The newsletters have strong engagement rates, with click-throughs averaging 25%, very low churn rates, and an average conversion rate between 6-7% to paid subscriptions.
Revenue is primarily from advertising and business subscriptions for busy venues who use their listing services regularly, with sponsored content and reader subscriptions growing as part of the mix.
The DMMG team is now made up of two full-time staff, three part-time local editors and some freelance social support. But crucially, the business would have never got to this stage by itself without strategic use of AI.
How AI works for DMMG
With a very small team and little wiggle room to experiment with a wide range of tools, Wilson-Powell has focused on a few based on solving specific problems or tasks. “We use very little… but crucially we’ve really dived deep into those and figured out where they can save time, not save expertise,” she explained.
DMMG has targeted its use of AI in three key areas: editorial production, infrastructure management, and business outreach. This has allowed the network to operate at a level which would usually require a much larger team and external investment. Wilson-Powell illustrated a few examples across these areas of their AI use.
1 – Editorial production
One of the popular features of DMMG’s newsletters is event listings across the three towns. There can be dozens of these per newsletter, sourced from venues, social media and direct submissions. Claude has been trained on DMMG’s house style, meaning it can quickly and consistently format listings ready for review.
DMMG has also recently introduced a classified service; something that many local news organisations have really struggled with in digital forms. “We’re not reinventing the wheel, we’re just making it suitable for a modern age,” Wilson-Powell said, explaining that the process is almost entirely automated.
Local businesses wanting to advertise across any of DMMG’s towns simply fill in a form, which Wilson-Powell says takes just a few minutes. The information is tightly controlled using Airtable and JotForm integrations, payments processed via Stripe, and tracked via Monday. Claude applies a consistent writing style to the listings, and importantly, a human always reviews before going live.
AI is also used in outreach. DMMG offer sponsored editorial slots across the newsletters, and for Don’t Miss Margate, these are often booked out months in advance. “Part of the reason [slots are] booked 10 weeks out is that we’re sending outreach emails that are all done and tracked through Monday and Claude,” explained Wilson-Powell.
2 – Infrastructure management
The second pillar of DMMG’s AI strategy is infrastructure management. Having a remote-first team across a growing number of local towns comes with extra admin and communication pressures.
Wilson-Powell has found a number of uses for AI across their commercial and operational infrastructure and processes. “Using Claude as an interface with Monday makes it so much easier, because I can use Claude as an assistant, and Claude sorts out Monday for me,” she outlined. “So if I’ve had a really good conversation with a brand partner, I want to update that on my sales pipeline or set myself a follow-up, or move it to a sale and send an invoice, Claude does all that for me. I just speak to it.”
Using these tools, the team manage the whole advertising pipeline, from writing rate cards and building forms consistently across the three towns without the need to spin up or rebuild for any new launches.
3 – Strategic and financial planning
Wilson-Powell stepped into the business full-time in January 2026, having previously fully bootstrapped it around other commitments. Now, she is seeking funding; something she notes requires a lot of her time. “Anyone who’s raised funding knows it’s a full-time job, it’s not the most fun job, and you constantly need to be pivoting decks, docs, conversations, everything you might need for those investors,” she explained.
“By building out a really strong foundation between Claude, Canva and Monday, we can turn those documents around really quickly. I can have the conversations I need to have without spending half a day trying to rebuild a deck that’s only going to get looked at for 20 seconds in a meeting.”
Everything from funding bid frameworks to competitive analysis and editorial playbooks have been built far more quickly with the assistance of AI tools. But there’s a caveat Wilson-Powell shared for others looking to do the same.
“Using it as someone who’s got more experience in the industry, you know in your gut whether what it’s telling you is right or not,” she said. “But I do worry about people with not so much experience using it, because you’ve got to have that critical thinking behind it as well.”
Where DMMG doesn’t use AI
Just as critical to Wilson-Powell are DMMG’s red lines for AI use. “Our number one red line: we don’t touch editorial,” she emphasised. “We have a small central team, but we have very deeply rooted local editors… We want to feel part of that community, we’re putting people back in place. AI is very good at the ‘slop’ of talking about local towns or travel content, but it’s not from a place. It can’t talk to you like your neighbour or use the slang and the in-jokes that all towns have.”
Using AI for back-end processes, admin, operations and sales pipelines has freed up her and the team to do the human work they do best. Wilson-Powell explained that the reason DMMG’s brands are getting such great cut-through in towns is because people know the editors personally, and know who they can email with their information.
She also pointed out that curation isn’t yet an area they have considered using AI to help with. “Human curation is our secret sauce. We go out of our way to say we don’t list everything, we list the best of what’s on, the best of things you should know, and it’s that curation that people really trust us for.”
Wilson-Powell acknowledges that DMMG is a fast-scaling business that she wouldn’t have been able to operate alone even five years ago. But thanks to these tools, she can do more than would ever have been possible previously.
Her advice to other founders and small publications is to stick to a small number of tools, and look at what can be linked to make processes easier. “Start with the use case, because especially if you’re short on time…you can get completely rabbit-holed with the tool,” she said, emphasising that people need to be clear on what they need tools to do, not what they can do.
They also look at where tools can save time, versus where they’re replacing human expertise. Admin and process jobs are open for AI help and assistance. But editorial decisions and roles remain firmly with the humans.
Listen above, or search for ‘The Publisher Podcast’, by MediaVoices, on your podcast app.
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