The Business Case for WhatsApp-First Publishing
Juan Andrés Muñoz launched Pamplonews in 2022 to fill the gap in local, independent coverage of Pamplona. The hyperlocal newsroom centers everyday life, public services and civic power in the city’s neighborhoods.
Meet Pamplonews founder Juan Andrés Muñoz, who’s building a local newsroom inside WhatsApp — and charting the path to monetizing messaging
AGENCIA: What problem were you trying to solve when you first launched Pamplonews as a WhatsApp-first product?
JUAN ANDRÉS: The problem wasn't a lack of news outlets. Pamplona actually has several. The problem was that none of them were built for how people actually want to consume local news today. Existing outlets were either politically divisive, wrote in stiff "journalism jargon" that felt distant and artificial, or failed to focus on what people genuinely need. I wanted to create something different: a news source that prioritized utility over ideology, connection over division, and clarity over complexity. No performative outrage, no complicated prose trying to sound Important: just straightforward, conversational reporting on things that actually matter to daily life in Pamplona.
WhatsApp was the perfect medium for that vision because it's inherently conversational and intimate. The platform itself demanded a more human tone. You can't write in pompous newspaper-speak when you're appearing right next to someone's chat with their mom. WhatsApp forced us to be clear, concise, and genuinely useful, because if we weren't, people would just mute us. That constraint made the content better and more focused on what the community actually needed.
A: Why did WhatsApp feel like the right place to solve that problem, especially for a Spanish-language audience?
JA: In Spain, WhatsApp it’s not an app people use: it's the app. Everyone from teenagers to grandparents has it, checks it constantly, and trusts it for important information. Unlike in the U.S. where messaging is fragmented across iMessage, SMS, and various platforms, Spain is a WhatsApp monoculture with over 90% penetration. For local news, that universality is everything. I didn't need to convince anyone to download something new or check another website.
Spanish communication culture is inherently social and immediate. People share news through WhatsApp groups with family and friends constantly. By publishing there directly, we were plugging straight into how information already flows.
And this is not theory, we have proved it time and again. We have built several web apps that work well initially when we promote them, but then they lose steam because they are not as sticky as WhatsApp is. So our approach now is always “Think WhatsApp first… and only”.
A: Many U.S. publishers still treat WhatsApp as experimental. What do you think they misunderstand most about the platform?
JA: They misunderstand that WhatsApp isn't social media: it's infrastructure. U.S. publishers keep waiting for WhatsApp to "prove itself" the way they waited on Twitter or TikTok, but that's the wrong mental model.
WhatsApp is closer to SMS or email: it's how people actually communicate every single day, not a platform they visit when they're bored.
The biggest mistake is treating it like a nice-to-have distribution experiment instead of a primary communication channel. American publishers are so focused on building apps, optimizing for Google, and chasing social algorithms that they're overlooking the fact that their audience is already on WhatsApp, checking it 20+ times a day, and would gladly receive news there if someone just showed up consistently.
A: Can you walk us through how your WhatsApp setup works at scale, especially using communities instead of groups or channels?
JA: We chose WhatsApp Communities very deliberately because they offer the best balance between privacy, intimacy, and scalability. Let me break down why we didn't go with the other options:
Why not Groups? WhatsApp Groups expose everyone's phone numbers to all members, which is a non-starter for privacy and GDPR compliance. You're also capped at 1,024 members, which severely limits growth potential.
Why not Channels? Channels solve the scale and privacy problems (unlimited subscribers, no exposed phone numbers) but they're impersonal and hidden away in a separate Updates tab. That isolation is the problem. People don't check the Updates tab with the same frequency or urgency as their main chat list. Channels feel like broadcast media, not community conversation. We lose the intimacy and the prime real estate of appearing directly among someone's personal conversations.
Why Communities work for us: They give us privacy without sacrificing presence. Subscribers don't see each other's phone numbers, but our newsletter still appears in their main chat interface alongside their personal conversations. That positioning is everything. When someone opens WhatsApp to check a message from a friend, they see our daily bulletin right there. We're part of their daily communication rhythm, not buried in a secondary tab they might check once a week. The CMS we built handles scheduling, content formatting, and distribution across these groups automatically. We draft once, preview how it'll look on mobile, schedule the send time, and the system handles delivery. Subscribers can mute notifications if they want to read on their own schedule, but the message is always waiting in their main chat list.
A: How does your system handle scheduling, analytics and content management compared to email-first platforms like Substack or Beehiiv?
JA: We actually studied platforms like Beehiiv pretty extensively: their editing workflow, analytics dashboards, and content management logic and used that as our north star when building our WhatsApp CMS. The goal was to create a similar level of functionality, but built for WhatsApp's unique constraints and opportunities rather than just adapting email tools.
Our CMS handles scheduling so we can queue up daily newsletters in advance and maintain our consistent send time without manual intervention. The content editor is optimized for WhatsApp's format and markdown. We can draft, preview exactly how messages will appear on mobile, and publish with one click.
On the analytics side, we track delivery rates, read receipts (where available), link click-throughs and subscriber growth/churn. The system we built is lean, robust, and serves our needs beautifully. Could it do everything Beehiiv does? No. But it does everything a WhatsApp publisher actually needs.
A: What was the first WhatsApp monetization approach that actually worked for you, and what failed before that?
JA: The first thing that actually worked was partnerships with event organizers. Local cultural events, concerts, exhibitions, festivals… these were natural fits for our audience because Pamplona has such a strong events calendar, and people genuinely wanted to know what was happening each weekend. Event organizers needed reach, and we had a highly engaged local audience checking their phones daily. It was a clean exchange of value.
What failed before that? My expectations. I came in assuming I could command higher CPMs or charge rates comparable to what larger digital publishers were getting. The reality is that local businesses are really struggling financially and they did not understand the value of WhatsApp as a distribution channel because they were too used to the local radio, local newspaper, or their own Instagram accounts. I had to lower my expectations and adjust to what the market was willing to pay, and it was a bit frustrating.
A: For publishers just starting out, what’s a realistic first monetization goal on WhatsApp?
JA: Your first immediate goal shouldn't be direct monetization. I think it should be proving subscriber value and building retention. WhatsApp is a trust-based medium where people let you into their most personal communication space. If you push sponsorships or other monetization strategies before establishing that relationship, you'll lose subscribers faster than you gain them.
Spend your first 6-12 months aiming for 500-1,000 engaged local subscribers, tracking click-through rates, and demonstrating that WhatsApp is a viable distribution channel worth investing in. Once you've built that foundation, indirect monetization is your lowest-hanging fruit via local business partnerships for sponsored posts and events promotion, with a realistic first-year goal of 500-1,500 usd/month from these indirect revenue streams, enough to cover costs and prove the business model has legs.
A: Any publisher building on WhatsApp is ultimately dependent on Meta. How do you think about that risk and do you have contingency plans in place?
JA: Platform dependency is a real risk and I'd be naive to ignore it. Meta can change policies or sunset features with little warning. Those shifts could potentially change how we operate on the platform overnight. That said, I think about this risk differently than I would with algorithmic platforms like Facebook or Instagram. WhatsApp is fundamentally a direct communication channel: I own the relationship with my subscribers in a way I don't on social media. There's no algorithm deciding whether my audience sees my message. The dependency is on the infrastructure, not on Meta's favor or reach.
Internally we have considered different scenarios if things would change. One of our contingency plans is reverting to email, which is probably the most resilient, platform-independent channel we have as publishers. If WhatsApp disappeared tomorrow, we would lose immediacy and convenience, but we wouldn't lose our entire audience.
But honestly, I would lose one big incentive to do what I do. The reality is that every digital distribution channel involves platform dependency. For us, WhatsApp's risk is acceptable because the platform has 2+ billion users globally and deep penetration in Spain. It's not going anywhere soon. Besides, the direct-messaging model is inherently less fragile than algorithmic discovery.
A: What kinds of content consistently drive the highest engagement on WhatsApp, and how do you balance staying present without overwhelming subscribers?
JA: The content that drives the highest engagement for us is hyper-local and genuinely useful to daily life: housing updates (especially subsidized housing opportunities and application deadlines); job postings and employment opportunities; discounts and sweepstakes; food and gastronomy (In Navarra, food isn't just a topic, it's practically a religion)
We're disciplined about volume. We send one message per day, Monday through Friday, with each newsletter capped at roughly 5,000 characters. This constraint forces us to be ruthlessly editorial, only the most relevant stories and events make the cut, which means subscribers trust that when we show up in their inbox, it's worth reading. On Fridays, we send a weekend edition too that's more event-oriented and leisure-focused: things to do, cultural events.
A: What excites you most about WhatsApp’s future for news publishers in the next 1–2 years? How can small or mid-size U.S. newsrooms start piloting this now?
JA: What excites me most is that WhatsApp is finally being recognized as a primary distribution channel rather than just a social media afterthought and we should see more innovation in the space. I've seen firsthand that people check their messaging apps multiple times a day, far more consistently than they open news apps or visit websites. The platform's nearly universal adoption means you're meeting audiences where they already are, not asking them to download yet another app or remember another URL.
For small or mid-size U.S. newsrooms who want to pilot this model, I would start small and focused. These are some pointers based on my experience:
Choose one beat or newsletter to pilot: pick your strongest vertical and create a dedicated community for it
Promote the WhatsApp community where your audience already is: make it a one-click subscribe. The friction is minimal.
Start posting just once a day, and provide a CLEAR VALUE: write like you talk to a friend. Keep messages concise but packed with information and action-oriented.
Track your metrics: track every link you share so you can measure which stories drive interest and guide your editorial efforts..
The beautiful thing about WhatsApp is that it requires almost no budget to start. For small newsrooms stretched thin, that's a massive built-in audience. You're essentially inserting your newsroom into people's daily communication habits, and that's where sustainable audience relationships are built.
A: If you could have only one app on your phone - what would it be and why?
JA: Besides the Phone app itself, I'd have to say WhatsApp (Agencia : 😆), not just because it's my primary tool for Pamplonews, but because it's become the communication backbone for my entire work and personal life.
That said, if I'm being honest about what I actually use obsessively: it's a tie between Inoreader and Raindrop.io. Inoreader is my newsroom in my pocket. Raindrop.io is where I save and organize everything. Together, they're essentially my external brain for content creation.
A: If you could capture 2026 (so far) in a song, what would it be?
JA: "The Promise" by When in Rome. Partly because I recently attended a special 20th anniversary screening of "Napoleon Dynamite" with my oldest daughter and the cast, and hearing that song again in that context hit differently.
But beyond the nostalgia, there's something about its optimistic, forward-moving energy that perfectly captures where I am with Pamplonews this year. It's a song about commitment and momentum, about showing up and delivering on what you've promised.
A: How can publishers work with you?
JA: I can help media organizations develop and optimize their WhatsApp content distribution strategy. Drawing from my hands-on experience building Pamplonews' audience through WhatsApp, I guide publishers on best practices for audience engagement, content formats, automation workflows and growth tactics specific to the platform.
Publishers can also leverage the custom CMS we've built specifically for WhatsApp newsletter management. This system streamlines the entire process — from content creation/edition and scheduling to distribution and performance tracking — making it easier for newsrooms to maintain consistent, high-quality WhatsApp communications without the technical overhead and the burden of manually sending your messages.
Get in touch with Juan Andrés »
This Q&A was edited by Daniela Tabata.
How are you building capacity for community-first publishers? We want to feature your work. Drop us a line.
