Nearly five years after its founding, City Cast is recalibrating its local-news formula.

The media startup, backed by Graham Holdings and known for its daily podcasts and newsletters, is shuttering its operations in Houston and Boise while launching in the Twin Cities and Seattle. At the same time, it’s introducing social video as a core pillar of its model—part of what founder David Plotz calls “City Cast 2.0.”

The moves follow a period of rapid expansion that saw the company grow to more than a dozen markets in three years. Now, City Cast has learned enough to refine which cities and formats make sense.

“We realized that we weren’t in the right mix of cities,” Plotz said. “Houston is just too big to feel like a single community, and Boise, while wonderful, is too small. We do best in

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