We're excited to bring you another special News Guest episode this month featuring former New York Times executive editor Dean Baquet and The Texas Tribune co-founder Evan Smith, who spoke at last year's Independent News Sustainability Summit about the future of local watchdog journalism — and how national newsrooms like the Times can support it. P.S. Our next in-person event is only a few months away! The Southeast News Sustainability Meetup in Durham, North Carolina this October will bring together publishers from across the Southeast United States, and it will also host the 2023 LION Local Journalism Awards Ceremony.

We're excited to bring you a special News Guest episode this month featuring Charlottesville Tomorrow CEO and editor-in-chief Angilee Shah and The Markup editor-in-chief Sisi Wei, who spoke at last year's Independent News Sustainability Summit about how to reimagine newsroom culture and build more sustainable workplaces. P.S. Our next in-person event is only a few months away! The Southeast News Sustainability Meetup in Durham, North Carolina this October will bring together publishers from across the Southeast United States, and it will also host the 2023 LION Local Journalism Awards Ceremony.

With stories to edit, websites to update, and social media accounts to maintain, it’s easy for revenue work to fall by the wayside, unless it’s part of your daily routine. Our guests in this episode have ideas on how to keep you focused on getting dollars in the door in 2023 and beyond: Kyle Constable is the director of membership and digital innovation at The Connecticut Mirror. Lizzy Hazeltine is a business growth consultant who has worked with LION members across North America. Related resources (for LION members): 🎓 Take a course in the News Entrepreneur Academy on how to create a revenue growth plan and how to assess growth opportunities. 

When you’re a leader at an independent news organization, it’s easy to feel like you need to wear all the hats – or that you can’t take a day off because your audience and advertisers depend on you.  In this episode, you’ll hear advice about how to identify burnout in yourself and your team — and what to do about it – from two experienced news leaders: Ryan Belmore is the owner and publisher of What’sUpNewp, a LION member publication in Newport, Connecticut. Naseem S. Miller is a reporter at The Journalist’s Resource, where she writes about health and medicine. Other resources: ⚒️ Lead a “work redesign” in your newsroom. This American Press Institute guide shares advice for how to prevent burnout among newsroom managers. 🏖️ Figure out how to take a real break. When LION members turn the lights off for a month or longer to catch their breath, they almost never regret it. Last year, we talked with Gabe Schneider and Janelle Salanga about their decision to stop publishing new content for the summer as they prepared for a new phase of growth. ❌ Decide what you’re going to stop doing. You can learn more about the “stop-doing list” and other strategies for preventing burnout by reading this slide deck from the Independent News Sustainability Summit, as well as this thread on Twitter. 🎓 Take a course on addressing and avoiding burnout (for LION members only). This self-guided News Entrepreneur Academy course is led by Sushil Cheema, a journalist turned executive coach specializing in burnout and self-care, professional development, interpersonal relationships and communication. News Guest is hosted by Candice Fortman and produced and edited by Jenna Spinelle, with editorial support from Ben DeJarnette. 

News organizations sometimes get so busy doing the work that they forget to track their impact or tell their story to stakeholders, including the people most likely to support them financially. In this episode of News Guest, you’ll learn why and how you can make time for this important work with insights and advice from: Angie Cirone, former director of journalism sustainability at Richland Source, a LION member in northern Ohio Anjanette Delgado, executive editor of the Detroit Free Press and contributor to the Media Impact Project at the University of Southern California Related Resources: Resolve Philly's customizable impact tracker 7 tips for tracking your impact by Anjanette Delgado How Richland Source raised $250K in community support by Jay Allred 7 campaign ideas to help you ask readers for support in new ways

A formal education may prepare us well for a lot of things, but being a manager often isn’t one of them. In this News Guest episode, you’ll hear from two people who have been on both sides of newsroom management about how independent news publishers can be better managers. Samantha Ragland is vice president of journalism programs at the American Press Institute and has coached newsroom leaders across the country. Wendi C. Thomas is the founder and publisher of MLK50, a LION member newsroom in Memphis that focuses on the intersection of poverty, power and policy. Related reading: How three women journalist leaders channelled legacy newsroom experiences into creating healthier nonprofit organizations by Vignesh Ramachandran To become managers, journalists must let go of independent mindset by Annie Russell  When student loans and the housing crisis force journalists out of the business by Wendi C. Thomas Related resources: The Independent News Sustainability Summit in Austin this October will feature sessions on managing a team, recruiting and retaining employees, and building a support network as a leader. The News Entrepreneur Academy includes video courses courses on HR Best Practices with experienced HR consultant Deb Lewis, Management Best Practices with executive coach and marketing consultant Natalie Archibald, and Addressing and Avoiding Burnout with executive coach and former New York Times reporter Sushil Cheema. The LION-GNI Sustainability Audits and Funding program offers personalized business advice and up to $6,000 of funding to help independent publishers build more sustainable businesses. The deadline to apply for the next round of audits is Oct. 10. Sign up for the LION newsletter for more insights, tips and resources to help independent news publishers plan for revenue growth.

There are more revenue options than ever available to local independent publishers, from selling ads to launching a membership program to holding events to publishing sponsored content. Of course, having more options also means having to make more decisions — and creating more opportunities for a revenue stream to fail. In this episode, our host Candice Fortman talks with LION member Tom Lappas and news business expert Simon Owens about how publishers can determine the right revenue sources for their business and avoid learning the hard way that a monetization strategy wasn’t a good fit. Tom Lappas is founder and publisher of the Henrico Citizen in central Virginia, and Simon Owens is a longtime journalist, marketer, and PR professional who hosts The Business of Content podcast and publishes Simon Owens’s Tech and Media Newsletter on Substack. Related resources: The Independent News Sustainability Summit in Austin this October will feature sessions on planning for growth, assessing revenue opportunities, launching advertising and sponsorships, growing advertising and sponsorships, optimizing your audience funnel and other revenue topics. The News Entrepreneur Academy includes a lesson on Launching a New Revenue Stream, and later this month we plan to add a new Evaluating Growth Opportunities course that will provide frameworks for identifying different revenue opportunities and deciding whether an idea is worth pursuing. The LION-GNI Sustainability Audits and Funding program offers personalized business advice and up to $6,000 of funding to help independent publishers build more sustainable businesses. The deadline to apply for the next round of audits is Oct. 10. Sign up for the LION newsletter for more insights, tips and resources to help independent news publishers plan for revenue growth.  News Guest is a production of LION Publishers, the only professional association solely focused on helping publishers build and grow more sustainable independent news business in the U.S. and Canada. This episode is hosted produced and edited by Jenna Spinelle, with editorial support from Ben DeJarnette. 

One of the hardest parts of running an independent news business is building an audience from scratch, especially if you’re trying to do it on a shoestring budget. In this episode of News Guest, host Candice Fortman of Outlier Media is joined by two guests who have worked deep in the weeds of audience strategy to talk about how researching and understanding the communities you want to serve can help you grow your audience – faster. Related Resources: Check out LION's News Entrepreneur Academy for a members-only course on audience research and product design led by Rebekah Monson.  Apply for the LION-GNI Sustainability Audits and Funding program for the opportunity to receive a personalized roadmap and up to $6,000 of funding to help build a stronger, more sustainable business.

It's almost time for Season 2 of News Guest! Candice Fortman from Outlier Media is back to host a series of conversations about some of the most important topics for local news publishers and people who follow the industry. We'll be talking about audience development, revenue, demonstrating impact, preventing burnout and so much more. Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts, and look out for a new episode on the first Tuesday of every month. 

In Part I of this conversation, we talked with Santa Cruz Local founder Kara Meyberg Guzman about finding a sustainable workload and with Gettysburg Connection founder Chuck Stangor about building and managing a tech stack. In this month’s episode, we hear from three more independent news publishers about their advice for first-time founders: Don’t wait to file your IRS paperwork. If you plan to operate your business as a nonprofit, Shasta Scout founder Annelise Pierce warns that it can take a long time to get official 501(c)3 status – and you might need to find a fiscal sponsor in the meantime. Start thinking about revenue early. RevLab director Emily Dresslar says founders should build a revenue strategy right out of the gate and even consider trying to get sponsors or advertisers on board before launch. Embrace learning on the job. To close out the episode (and Season 1 of News Guest!), we turned the tables on our host Candice Fortman and asked what she’s learned since becoming executive director of Outlier Media three years ago. Her biggest lesson: There’s no way to prepare for leading a news organization for the first time. You just have to learn on the job. Related reading: Nonprofit or For-Profit — Which Model is Right for your Newsroom? by Jo Ellen Green Kaiser 5 Tips for Choosing a Fiscal Sponsor for your Newsroom by Jo Ellen Green Kaiser Village Media, Relying on Local Advertising, Seems to Have Found a Scalable (and Profitable) Local News Model by Christine Schmidt This episode of News Guest is sponsored by Stacker, the newswire that independent publishers trust for data-driven stories, graphics, and analysis – all at no cost. Request a demo»

Getting an independent local news business off the ground is no small feat, and figuring out how to keep it going can be even harder. So we asked publishers: What do you wish you'd known about launching a news business before you started? In this episode of News Guest, we talk with two LION members about their perspectives on that question and the lessons they’ve learned the hard way: To build a sustainable news business, set a sustainable workload: Santa Cruz Local founder Kara Meyberg Guzman explains how she found herself working 80 hours a week as a news founder – and how she and her team made a plan to fix that. Beware the plug-ins: Gettysburg Connection founder Chuck Stangor talks about building a website on WordPress and learning how to manage all the plug-ins that have become part of his “tech stack.” Related resources: Sign up for the News Founder Challenge, a six-week newsletter course that will help you test and refine your news business idea.  Read the GNI Startups Playbook, a step-by-step guide to building and launching a news business.  RSVP for LION's News Founder Meetup (March 16, 2022) to meet other aspiring and early-stage news founders and ask Kara your questions about launching a business.

Research shows that solutions journalism can combat news fatigue, build trust with readers, and deliver more impact than reporting focused on problems alone. But can solutions journalism move the needle on revenue? In this episode of News Guest, you’ll hear two perspectives on that question – first, from Flint Beat founder Jiquanda Johnson in an interview with our host Candice Fortman, and then from Alec Saelens, who’s the Newsroom Revenue Manager at the Solutions Journalism Network. Related Resources: Read the Solutions Journalism Network's Revenue Playbook. If you're a LION member, sign up for a one-hour workshop with SJN’s Alec Saelens to learn about practical steps you can take to attract sponsorships, grants, reader revenue and other funding to support your solutions journalism and strengthen your business.

Our hypothesis at LION is that the path to sustainability for independent news businesses starts with a strong foundation of operational resilience, financial health, and journalistic impact. But what do these three pillars look like in practice? In our latest episode of News Guest, we explore seven ideas to improve news business sustainability that were first shared at the 2021 LION Local Journalism Awards, including ideas for organizing your team, engaging your audience, and streamlining your workflows. Related reading: Watch all seven "lightning talk" presentations from the LION Local Journalism Awards Hear Broadstreet Ads founder Kenny Katzgrau explain five key advantages that local publishers have for selling digital advertising This episode is sponsored by Broadstreet Ads, in recognition of LION’s Local Journalism Awards and the continued dedication and excellence of LION members across North America.

Fall means peak fundraising season for many news organizations — and our three guests today are full of advice about how to build relationships with potential funders, especially those without a long history of supporting journalism. Kimberly Griffin is the publisher and director of revenue for Mississippi Free Press; Kimberly Spencer is the senior director of development and donor relations at Chalkbeat, which reports on education across America; and Robert Chappell is the associate publisher for Madison365, a local news site that serves communities of color in Madison, Wisconsin. Bonus for LION members: Join us on Tuesday, November 30 for a LION Lesson that will help you build or refine an end-of-year fundraising campaign. If you’re starting from scratch, we’ll give you advice on how to develop a lightweight membership or donation campaign that you can launch before the holidays. If you’re already deep in the weeds, we’ll help you get peer feedback on your campaign messaging or tactics. RSVP here for the LIONLesson, and let us know in the registration form what support you’re looking for so that we can cater the breakout groups to your needs. Related Reading: What 16 publishers learned pitching funders on journalism projects (Local Media Association) Crafting a winning pitch to attract funding (IJNet) 3 ways the nonprofit newsroom PublicSource is becoming more sustainable (LION Publishers)

Scalawag has learned that in-person and virtual events can be a powerful “top of funnel” marketing tool for membership by helping introduce its brand to the kind of progressive, diverse, engaged Southerners who are most likely to become paying supporters. In this episode, Scalawag executive director Cierra Hinton and audience growth and engagement manager Sarah Glen share what they’ve learned about hosting great events as community-building and revenue-growth strategies that will pave the way for their next phase of growth. Related reading: How Scalawag made the growth case for events (Membership Puzzle Project) Here's how the subscriber funnel, or whatever you want to call it, works (Poynter) Journalism needs to connect the dots between audience engagement and making money. The key might be the concept of a marketing funnel (GroundSource) Want to make your journalism more memberful? Find a range of proven practices, including revenue-generating routines (Membership Puzzle Project) Why the South needs movement journalism (Scalawag)

Reader revenue often gets talked up as the future of local news, but what about the people who can’t afford to pay? In this episode of News Guest, Candice talks with El Tímpano founder Madeleine Bair about meeting information needs in low-income communities — and how her nonprofit newsroom unlocked a new revenue stream by doing exactly that.

The 19th* is celebrating its first birthday this month, and there’s a lot to celebrate, from a $12 million fundraising haul to its nearly 11,000 paying members.  But co-founder and publisher Amanda Zamora says the high-flying independent news startup has also made a few mistakes along the way, especially when it comes to planning for and managing growth. In this episode of News Guest, our host Candice Fortman talks with Amanda about the idea behind The 19th* and the challenge of launching it during a pandemic, as well as what she'd do differently if she could start again.

An all-volunteer passion project grows into a full-fledged news operation, with staff to manage, contractors to pay, and a business to run. Gabe Schneider and The Objective team have spent the last 12 months charging full speed ahead at this transition, but now they’re about to try something different: slowing down. In this episode of News Guest, our host Candice Fortman talks with Gabe and his colleague Janelle Salanga about why they’ve decided to take a break from publishing at The Objective this summer, and how they plan to use this pause to set themselves up for success.

Last summer, Luke Baumgarten was one of 24 aspiring news entrepreneurs selected to participate in the inaugural Startups Boot Camp, a partnership between LION and the Google News Initiative. Today, he’s the publisher of RANGE, a solutions-focused local news organization with nearly 1,000 newsletter readers and 100 paying members. In this episode of News Guest, Outlier Media executive director Candice Fortman talks with Luke about his first six months as an independent news founder, plus the creative growth tactics he used to build his audience from scratch.

Many news organizations across the country have *talked* about diversifying their teams and prioritizing equity and inclusion, especially in the wake of last year's Black Lives Matter protests. The Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service has actually done it. Nearly 70 percent of MNNS's paid staff identify as people of color, including its top editor Ron Smith — and it's not by accident. In this episode of News Guest, our host Candice Fortman talks with Ron about the approaches to recruitment, hiring, and training that have helped Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service build one of the most racially diverse news teams in the country, and what the rest of us can learn from it.