Building & Maintaining A Local News Business (Morning Session) (RSVP)

Local, independent news is a crucial component of thriving communities. But it’s challenging to launch, grow and maintain a sustainable local news business. Many journalists find themselves needing to quickly learn about the business side of the industry while also covering local stories or leading teams of reporters. It can be a lonely, overwhelming journey.

LION Publishers supports news entrepreneurs by helping independent news publishers build more sustainable businesses. Over the past five years, LION has grown significantly while providing training and resources for publications that range from hyperlocal sites run by a single person to large nonprofits that have teams working on investigative stories.

LION has established standards for measuring business metrics associated with increased stability and sustainability for news organizations. The Sustainability Audit program has since provided comprehensive assessments of the strengths and opportunities of more than 350 LION members. Publishers can then use audit recommendations to set new short, medium and long-term goals to improve their financial health, journalistic impact and operational resilience.

In this session, you will learn about LION’s pillars of sustainability and have a chance to work on an exercise designed to help you increase your understanding of the financial health of your news business (or potential business). This session is relevant for publishers and editors of existing publications and entrepreneurs who are planning to launch a new digital news site or other local news product.

Please note: This session is identical to the "Building & Maintaining A Local News Business (Afternoon Session)," which follows from 1:00 PM - 3:00 PM ET

This session requires ONA24 registration and advance sign-up through the RSVP process. Registered attendees can sign up using their personalized account link found in your registration confirmation email sent by registration@journalists.org. More information about the RSVP process can be found in our FAQs.