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Join us for our next LION Lesson; receive a discounted ticket to the Summit if you’re a member of NABJ, AAJA, NAJA or NAHJ; read about a scrappy Iowa startup
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Four Announcements from the LION team
Join us on Thursday, Feb. 20 for our next LION Lesson with VTDigger
On February 20 from 1–2 p.m. PT/4–5 p.m. ET, we’ll hear from Stacey Peters of VTDigger, which has launched its first-ever paid Member Services portals, including paid press releases, obituaries and classifieds. The PR Portal and Obits Portal have already resulted in a huge SEO boost and brought in new audiences; a new partner has signed on, bringing in $1,000 in monthly revenue; and paid press release are bringing in about $500/week. Stacey will talk about the off-the-shelf tools, editorial workflow and rollout strategy she used to help build this new revenue stream. RSVP here. And if you’re not a LION member and would like to join, learn how to become a member.
If you’re a member of NABJ, AAJA, NAJA or NAHJ, get a LION member discount to our annual Summit
LION Publishers’ mission is to help local news entrepreneurs build and grow financially sustainable small businesses. And at this year’s annual Summit in Seattle, it’s particularly important to us that we support journalists of color from across the country who represent the diversity of the publications and communities LION aims to serve. That’s why we’re offering discounted tickets to all members of the National Association of Black Journalists, the Asian American Journalists Association, the National Association of Hispanic Journalists and the Native American Journalists Association. Learn more here.
LION Members: Buy your Summit ticket for just $175
The lowest price our tickets will *ever* be is now through the end of February! Members can buy a ticket for $175 and nonmembers can get their ticket for $275. Our Summit is in Seattle from Oct. 23–24 with a training day on October 22. Your Summit ticket includes two days of programming, one lunch, a pre-awards ceremony reception and the awards dinner and ceremony. Buy your tickets here now before prices go up!
Here’s more on changes we’re making to this year’s Summit based on your feedback; information on accommodation and travel; and other FAQs, including a breakdown of costs.
Are you a LION member looking for student interns?
We think it’s valuable to expose the next generation of entrepreneurs to a career in local independent news. Send us any internship listings you have for this upcoming summer and we’ll compile them into one post and promote the list to journalism students across the country. (Including making sure it appears in databases like this one!) Email your listings to anika@lionpublishers.com by the end of February.
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Seven Opportunities for LIONs
Ready to transition to a new CMS? Here are some resources to help
The Knight Foundation is inviting nonprofit newsrooms and newsrooms that serve underrepresented communities to apply for the inaugural round of the Sustainable Publishing Solutions Initiative. In its first year, this program will offer a one-time subsidy grant of $20,000 to 25 publishers that can be applied to the adoption or management of a CMS of their choice. Apply by March 8 and learn more here.
Also, NewsCatalyst and Poynter teamed up to research CMSs to help publishers decide which one is the best fit for them. So far the guide includes Arc, Chorus, Ghost, The News Project and Newspack. If you’d like to see a demo of some of the CMSs, sign up here.
Apply for a New Media Ventures grant
New Media Ventures are looking to fund “activists and entrepreneurs wrestling with the challenges facing our democracy.” They fund individual projects up to $250,000. Learn more and apply by March 2.
Learn about the optimal sales process from Broadstreet Ads in this free webinar
The first installment of Broadstreet's Ad Sales Training Webinar Series, which will “we'll outline and explore the optimal sales process — prospecting, pitching, proposing and delivering performance in detail,” will be on Feb. 12 at 1 p.m. ET with Broadstreet Ads and Annette Batson, the sales director for Baristanet. Register here.
Beta test an app that empowers female journalists to take action in threatening situations
jSafe, a collaboration between the Reynolds Journalism Institute and the Coalition for Women in Journalism, is “an app to help female journalists fight against harassment, bullying and assault to get journalists help they need when they find themselves in threatening situations.” App users can “document incidents by uploading the attacker’s email or social media handles” and “the app allows users to store any photo or video evidence they might have and indicate the level of threat they are experiencing.” Learn more and sign up to become a beta tester.
Learn how to design a successful collaborative journalism project
On Wednesday, March 25 from 1–2 p.m. ET, Heather Bryant, founder of Project Facet, will lead this webinar focused on “the spectrum of considerations to consider internally and with partners to establish shared goals, expectations, workflow and day to day logistics,” and hosted by the Center for Cooperative Media at Montclair State University. RSVP here.
Hear from journalism entrepreneurs in the Indie News Talks Canadian media startup
The Discourse has organized the Independent News Challenge to help journalist entrepreneurs and small publishers grow. As part of the program, any publishers are welcome to join two free upcoming webinars: One on Feb. 26 at noon PT on how WhereBy.Us uses product development concepts from the tech world to build local news offerings (by former WhereBy.Us product director and current LION programming director Anika Anand) and one on March 11 at noon PT about how Serbian publication Južne Vesti found creative ways to build new digital audiences (by cofounder Predrag Blagojević).
Apply for the Solution Journalism Network’s next round of Renewing Democracy grants
The team is looking for pitches that “get away from horse-race coverage of campaigns, focusing instead on substantive stories that illuminate who’s making progress — and how — on issues that trouble your audience most.” Along with regular solutions journalism pitches, SJN is partnering with Hearken “to support newsrooms that want to reimagine their elections coverage by combining solutions journalism with a Citizens Agenda approach.” Most of the grants are up to $4,000, although “a few can be bigger for very ambitious proposals.” Learn more.
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What We're Reading
- After Layoffs At The Brooklyn Eagle, Current And Former Staffers Accuse Owner Of Mismanagement (The Gothamist)
- Why laid off journalists should launch their own media companies (Simon Owens) and why that perspective assumes a lot of privilege (Kim Bui)
- A Scrappy Iowa Start-Up Is the ‘It’ Read for Political Insiders (The New York Times)
- Building the most representative newsroom in America (Poynter, Mel Grau)
- What happens when the news is gone? (The New Yorker)
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LION Member Kudos
👭The forthcoming site for Oakland, CA is hiring editors and reporters and its newly nonprofit parent company is staffing up too; congrats Lance Knobel and Tasneem Raja!
💬San Jose Spotlight is now a full member of the California News Publishers Association, after a rule changing the status of digital-only publishers.
💰Flint Beat is one of a dozen newsrooms joining this Solutions Journalism Project effort to develop revenue streams based on solutions reporting.
🙌LION Publishers board member Tracie Powell, formerly a fellow with the Democracy Fund, is now a program officer for Borealis Philanthropy’s new Racial Equity in Journalism Fund.
👏New LION Publisher member 70and73, covering South Jersey, has officially launched.
🎉The Long Beach Post now owns the Long Beach Business Journal in town.
Share your good news with us: membership@lionpublishers.com
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How to reach us
When you reply to this email, we all receive it and you'll hear back from one of us. For more specific questions, you can reach out to:
Executive Director: Chris Krewson, chris@lionpublishers.com
Revenue and Operations Director: Phayvanh Luekhamhan, phayvanh@lionpublishers.com
Programming Director: Anika Anand, anika@lionpublishers.com
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