The LION Operational Readiness Handbook
About the Handbook
While sustainability is often cited as a goal for journalism organizations, it hasn’t been well defined by our industry. At LION, our hypothesis is that for a news organization to be sustainable, it must first focus on being operationally resilient, which helps it become financially healthy and ultimately allows it to achieve journalistic impact.
But many local independent news organizations often start from the opposite direction: they gain some audience traction that shows they can make journalistic impact, then they seek to generate enough revenue to support that work, and rarely think of operational resilience until they realize they need consistent internal processes and policies in order to maintain or grow their capacity.
That’s why we’ve created this Operational Readiness Handbook. We hope it can be a starting place for articulating the most crucial foundational elements of running an operationally resilient business, which in turn supports revenue generation and journalistic impact.
The goal of this Handbook is to ensure publishers have the strategic and operational infrastructure to hire, support and retain staff and ultimately solidify their news organization’s financial sustainability.
This Handbook will:
- Offer high-level best practices. We know that independent news entrepreneurs with small teams and stretched budgets often experience choice overload and decision fatigue. So we’ve kept this guide very high level and only shared practices that we or those we respect have had success with. We plan to offer additional support to answer specific questions you have in more detail.
- Aim to be extremely practical. We’ve included templates, examples and step-by-step instructions as often as we can. These are not meant to be prescriptive, but rather a starting place for you to adapt and apply to your news business.
- Be a living document. As you use the resources in this guide, tell us what works and what could be improved upon and we’ll make updates to this document as we go.
About the Authors
This course was developed by LION Staff with the invaluable help of Rebecca Ross, who is a former LION consultant and coach.
Handbook Lessons
Setting and Tracking Goals
In this lesson, we’ll cover how to define and track success for your news business.
Resource: Setting and Tracking Goals
The resource provides a worksheet to track Key Performance Indicators.
Managing Risk and Money
In this lesson, we’ll cover common risks for news businesses and best practices for financial planning.
Resource: Managing Risk and Money
This resource provides checklists and a workbook for managing risk and money.
Building and Retaining a Team
In this lesson, we’ll cover best practices for how to hire, onboard and retain a team member.
Resource: Building and Retaining a Team
The resource will provide a template for a job scorecard for a new or existing role.
Onboarding and Preparing your New Hire for Success
In this lesson, we’ll cover how to help a new hire feel welcome and confident in their new role.
Resource: Onboarding and Preparing Your New Hire for Success
This resource provides an onboarding checklist for a new hire.
Launching a New Revenue Stream
In this lesson, we’ll cover the systems, processes and resources you need to put in place to launch a new revenue stream.
Resource: Launching a New Revenue Stream
This resource will provide a checklist for launching a new revenue stream.
Putting It All Together
In this lesson, we’ll go over the highlights of the handbook and address next steps to operational resilience.
Resource: Putting It All Together
This resource will help you think through your own operational readiness journey.
Business structures and taxes for Canadian publishers
In this lesson, we’ll discuss best practices for business set-up and tax compliance for Canadian news businesses
Course Content
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