In the shadow of the massive Gateway Arch, known as the Gateway to the West, hundreds of independent news publishers, industry experts, and supporters of independent online news gathered at the LION Publishers Independent News Sustainability Summit in St. Louis, Missouri, on Sept. 3-5. LION stands for Local Independent Online News and it represents hundreds of newsrooms all over the U.S.
Their goal? To keep open the gateway to success in sustaining independent news outlets dedicated to providing community news, information and support in ways legacy media can’t or won’t do.
New BenitoLink managing editor Jim Johnson attended the summit to learn more about the independent news industry, its challenges and rewards, and network with those who attended.
With a theme of “Building the Future of Sustainable Independent News Businesses, the summit featured three days of expert-led keynote talks, and special sessions covering a range of topics including how to successfully pursue grant funding and how to use that funding to sustain and even expand a news operation.
Beyond funding topics, journalists could learn more about how to effectively deal with organizational change, how to build sponsorships and other revenue opportunities within small- to medium-sized organizations, the benefits of a sustainability audit, transitioning to AI, and how to build an effective audience strategy.
Combining advice with real-world experience, each of the sessions focused on the core sustainability pillars of financial health, operational resilience and journalistic impact.
The summit’s stated goal was to provide independent news leaders with “actionable insights and lessons” to help them strengthen their organizations.
There was a general acknowledgement that the competition for scarce funding resources is as challenging as it has perhaps ever been.
Following brief opening remarks from LION Publisher Executive Director Cheris Krewson, the summit’s first session, titled “Leveraging transformational funding: How LIONs that received Press Forward grants are using that funding to grow their businesses,” Press Forward’s Graham Ringo spoke with a panel that included Athens County (Ohio) Independent co-founder and editor-in-chief Corinne Colbert, Conecta Arizona founder and director Maritza Felix, and Ethiopique LLC founder/publisher Henok Mengistu.
BenitoLink is a 2024 Press Forward “Closing Local Coverage Gaps Grant recipient.
Colbert spoke on the challenges of sustaining a news operation in an impoverished county with few donor and sponsor resources. Felix discussed the challenge of maintaining a news business with several undocumented employees in a border community during enhanced immigration enforcement. Mengistu warned how quickly even a substantial grant can be devoured by the demands of a news organization.
BenitoLink serves a community of about 48,000 people—many of them commuters whose attention is often outside our community, a challenge in its own right.
In a special roundtable to conclude the second day of the summit, Krewson introduced a panel that included Knight Foundation Business Sustainability Grantmaking Director Duc Luu, Press Forward Chicago Executive Director Tracy Baim, and Barr Foundation communications director Steven Lanter, who spoke generally about how news organizations should pursue funding and the challenges and rewards of maintaining a viable independent news organization.
In addition to the Knight Foundation and Press Forward, the summit was sponsored by Blue Lena, Google, the New York Times, the AP Fund for Journalism, the Democracy Fund, Newspack, NextDoor, and the University of Missouri’s Reynolds Journalism Institute, among others.
Next year’s INS summit is set for Sept. 9-11 in San Diego.
Source: https://benitolink.com/
