7 ideas to make your news business more sustainable in 2022
How independent publishers are learning to better organize their teams, engage their audiences, and streamline their workflows.

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.
You can watch the full five-minute presentations from last month’s Local Journalism Awards on YouTube, or listen to the podcast episode for a deep-dive conversation focused on three of them:
- Why La Converse started hosting “Bitchin’ Fridays” to help their team unpack and unwind from emotionally challenging work
- How Madison Minutes is using a CRM to measure and improve how it listens to its audience
- How Queerency designed a video experiment on Instagram to test a new user acquisition strategy
Got questions for these founders or any of the other presenters at last month’s event? Join our News Entrepreneur Community on Slack and share your questions in this thread, and we’ll help track down the answers you need to apply these ideas in your own newsroom.
News Guest is a monthly podcast to help you build and grow a sustainable news business. If you enjoy this episode, please rate and subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you do your streaming.
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