In my role as programming director at LION, I\u2019ve spent the last year taking educated guesses at where LION should live within this ecosystem. Now I\u2019m sharing what I\u2019ve learned: a quick back-of-the-napkin assessment of the current support landscape for aspiring news entrepreneurs, and a funnel for how to get more folks interested and able to build financially sustainable and impactful journalism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I hope by thinking out loud that you, person who is reading this, can help inform LION\u2019s next steps by challenging or helping me better articulate some of the hypotheses I\u2019ve laid out here.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I believe the digital news startups ecosystem is roughly divided into five categories: helping entrepreneurs gain the skills they need to succeed; creating a peer-support network that encourages entrepreneurs to learn from and adapt each others\u2019 ideas; providing direct services specifically tailored to digital startups\u2019 needs and capacity; providing direct funding or fundraising assistance; and helping build the pipeline for future founders, independent news employees and funders.<\/p>\n\n\n\n While there are many other organizations and projects that provide products or services that aspiring entrepreneurs can use, the efforts I discuss below are the only ones I know of that are squarely focused on helping train aspiring entrepreneurs and launch digital news startups.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Efforts like AAJA Catalyst<\/a>, INN Springboard<\/a>, and the Newmark J-School<\/a>\u2019s new program fall into Skills Building<\/em>. Indiegraf<\/a> helps aspiring Canadian entrepreneurs with Skills Building<\/em>, through its Indie News Challenge, as well as some Direct Services<\/em>, like marketing and technology. (Disclosure: I\u2019m an advisor<\/a> for Indiegraf). The American Journalism Project\u2019s venture philanthropy experiment falls into Funding<\/em>. I\u2019m not sure if anyone is working on Pipeline Building<\/em> yet (please e-mail me if you are!) And then there\u2019s Community Building<\/em>, where LION has historically focused its efforts, which includes connecting our members to each other and other useful resources.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It\u2019s been a year since I joined LION, an association largely created<\/a> to cure the loneliness that many first-time news entrepreneurs faced in communities across the U.S. And for the last eight years, our members have told us that it delivers on that value proposition of peer support.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cAs independent reporters who wanted to provide better local news in our community, we never would have been able to build our organization to sustainability without the invaluable expertise and supportive community offered by LION,\u201d said Kate Maxwell of Mendocino Voice<\/a>. \u201cWe would not have made it this far without the opportunities, guidance and camaraderie, provided by LION members.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Another member, Avant-Youth<\/a>\u2019s Judith Kim, said, \u201cIt\u2019s a space where I may feel less alone about the struggles of running a local news organization \u2014 that human element alone, especially during these trying times, gives me the courage to keep going.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n That peer support is a crucial foundation for LION to build on as we move into our next stage of growth, which falls into the Skills Building<\/em> category. Over the last few months, we\u2019ve designed and piloted programming to help entrepreneurs at the intersection of product, revenue and operations\u2013\u2013 three skill sets that many traditional journalists don\u2019t have but are absolutely essential to running a successful news business. We\u2019ve also contributed to research about digital startups, revised our membership criteria and started the GNI Startups Lab<\/a>, our training program for aspiring entrepreneurs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Our list of ideas is endless, but our resources are not. So as our organization gets closer to defining its strategic vision, I created this funnel as a way for us to begin mapping the stages of the news entrepreneur\u2019s journey, and thinking about how LION is best poised to support people and organizations at each of those stages.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This funnel also represents my current hypothesis on how we help create more digital news startups that are financially sustainable and<\/em> that create meaningful impact in how we learn and share information.<\/p>\n\n\n\n First, we have to help more people understand what it means to be an independent news organization. What are the benefits? The risks? Why do we, LION, think independent news is the future of media? Many people who are already news founders are the early adopters. They didn\u2019t need much convincing because it just made sense to strike out on their own. But there are others with lower risk tolerance or who don\u2019t have networks or models of success to look to\u2013\u2013 those are the folks I want to reach in this part of the funnel. Here are some ways we plan to do that:<\/p>\n\n\n\n Once someone sees the potential benefits of independent news ownership, they may consider starting their own business. This is where we lose a lot of would-be great entrepreneurs, because where to go from here can be a black box for those without existing knowledge or connections. We need to demystify the process of launching a news startup at this point<\/em> of the funnel so that folks have clear and realistic expectations of what could come next.<\/p>\n\n\n\n If you\u2019re serious about wanting to make a living from starting a news business, you need to be prepared to clearly define the customer need and your proposed solution, and, as soon as possible, create the most basic version of your idea to put in front of a potential audience for feedback. This is called \u201cde-risking\u201d your idea, which means before you pour lots of time and money into it, you\u2019re ensuring it\u2019s something people actually want (and are potentially willing to financially support!). Sometimes aspiring entrepreneurs, across industries, skip this step, go straight into launching a business, and end up losing a lot of time and money on an idea that went nowhere. That\u2019s why we believe so strongly in supporting this part of the funnel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Once you\u2019ve identified an audience that is excited and ready to support your work, you can raise and invest more resources to put toward launching the business. (Launching a news business could use its own funnel because there are so many moving parts, so think of this as a really<\/em> broad part of our basic funnel for now.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n After launching, it\u2019s tempting to think the hardest stuff is behind you, but many of our members will tell you that the most challenging work is just beginning. Many of our current members tell us they are missing some foundational knowledge of how to build and grow their business. That\u2019s why we\u2019ve been so focused on Skills Building<\/em> programs at this part of the funnel. (It\u2019s our hope that future aspiring entrepreneurs have access to these kinds of resources much earlier in their journey.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n *When I say be financially sustainable, this includes making impactful news and information.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n A decade ago it was impressive for a news startup to simply exist. But as the independent news industry evolves, so must our metrics of success. That\u2019s why this is the last step in our funnel:\u00a0We believe for a news startup to be successful, it must be financially sustainable and have a journalistic impact.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n This is obviously challenging, but actually the bigger challenge is agreeing on what we mean<\/em> by sustainability and impact, and then holding ourselves to those standards. The simplest definition of sustainability is that a business\u2019s profits exceed its costs, but there are other metrics to consider as well: Are your employees happy? Do you have a founder succession plan to ensure your work lives on? Do you have the ability to grow or make new investments if you choose to? Measuring qualitative journalistic impact can also be tricky, and while many attempts have been made to try and create a standard impact measurement, I think it\u2019s more important for us to standardize a framework that any newsroom can adapt for the communities they\u2019re serving.<\/p>\n\n\n\n We still have more work to do at this part of the funnel. We have a few ideas about how to approach this work, including working directly with a group of our members to look at their data together and figure out what metrics are most meaningful to track across digital news startups. Once we can work backwards from our success state, it will only strengthen each part of the funnel offerings for existing and future entrepreneurs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Whew, ok. Still with me? I appreciate it, because this work is urgent. We\u2019re consistently seeing more journalists, who are tired of legacy media\u2019s baggage, determined to design from scratch more equitable and community-centered newsrooms, particularly for communities that have often been overlooked or mischaracterized by traditional media. Digital news startups show incredible promise, but we still have a long way to go<\/a> to ensure they can replace the crumbling bedrock of our fractured and flailing media industry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And if I\u2019ve learned anything from watching the entire industry coalesce around trying to save legacy news publications, it\u2019s that coordination and collaboration across all of these journalism support organizations is absolutely crucial. If we want to eradicate news deserts; ensure stories from historically underrepresented communities are being accurately reflected; and help founders who don\u2019t have the financial ability to launch a business without significant resources, we must be more intentional about the support system we are building for journalism entrepreneurs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n My hope is if you\u2019re someone operating in or interested in operating in this space, you\u2019ll reach out with thoughtful feedback, critiques or ideas on how we can partner or support each other\u2019s work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Anika Anand is the programming director of <\/em>LION Publishers<\/em><\/a>, a journalism association supporting independent online news publishers. Our mission is to help existing and aspiring local news entrepreneurs build and grow financially sustainable small businesses. You can reach her at anika@lionpublishers.com, or <\/em>follow her on Twitter<\/em><\/a> where she sometimes tweets things.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n A big thanks to so many people I\u2019ve spoken with over the past year who have helped inform my thinking around this work, and a very special thank you to Yvonne Leow and Ariel Zirulnick for helping<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" If we want to help preserve the impact of good journalism, we must support journalism entrepreneurship that leads to financially sustainable news organizations. And this is most important for communities that have been historically underrepresented or mischaracterized by existing legacy news publications. Fortunately, an ecosystem is beginning to emerge among those of us who are…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":662,"featured_media":215022,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[141,2],"tags":[139,132,133,145,140],"coauthors":[],"featured_image_urls":{"full":["https:\/\/www.lionpublishers.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/07\/growing.jpeg",1400,933,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/www.lionpublishers.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/07\/growing-150x150.jpeg",150,150,true],"medium":["https:\/\/www.lionpublishers.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/07\/growing-300x200.jpeg",300,200,true],"medium_large":["https:\/\/www.lionpublishers.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/07\/growing-768x512.jpeg",768,512,true],"large":["https:\/\/www.lionpublishers.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/07\/growing-1024x682.jpeg",1024,682,true],"1536x1536":["https:\/\/www.lionpublishers.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/07\/growing.jpeg",1400,933,false],"2048x2048":["https:\/\/www.lionpublishers.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/07\/growing.jpeg",1400,933,false]},"post_excerpt_stackable":" If we want to help preserve the impact of good journalism, we must support journalism entrepreneurship that leads to financially sustainable news organizations. And this is most important for communities that have been historically underrepresented or mischaracterized by existing legacy news publications. Fortunately, an ecosystem is beginning to emerge among those of us who are trying to create and support digital news startups. While each of us may have different theories of change, I\u2019m confident we\u2019re all after the same goal: To ensure that the future of independent media is equitable, impactful and sustainable. In my role as programming director at…<\/p>\n","category_list":"Announcements<\/a>, News<\/a>","author_info":{"name":"Anika Anand","url":"https:\/\/www.lionpublishers.com\/author\/anikaanand00\/"},"comments_num":"0 comments","yoast_head":"\n![\"\"\/](\"https:\/\/miro.medium.com\/max\/1400\/1*Axgbrc0IijTm3TEd3htbVg.png\")
![\"\"\/](\"https:\/\/miro.medium.com\/max\/700\/1*42DgASDDYE6iKqoIJ83bzQ.png\")
Learn about the independent news ecosystem.<\/strong><\/h1>\n\n\n\n
Evaluate whether to launch a news startup.<\/strong><\/h1>\n\n\n\n
Rapidly prototype a news startup.<\/strong><\/h1>\n\n\n\n
Launch a news startup.<\/strong><\/h1>\n\n\n\n
Ensure you\u2019re on the path to financial sustainability.<\/strong><\/h1>\n\n\n\n
Be financially sustainable.*<\/strong><\/h1>\n\n\n\n