Membership Community
“Independent together.”
There’s a good reason why that’s our tagline. At LION, we believe that being independent doesn’t mean you have to go it alone.
Our Membership Community program connects members with peers to facilitate sharing best practices and creating a sense of belonging and camaraderie.
As part of our revamped 2024 Community Ambassadors program, LION convened six new peer-led networking groups. Each group was led by a LION community ambassador and met monthly via Zoom to discuss shared experiences and solutions to common challenges. 100 members signed up, with the ‘Newsrooms serving diaspora communities’ group attracting the highest number of participants.
Following the success of our inaugural affinity groups, which carved out intentional space for conversations between systematically excluded individuals during our 2023 Southeast News Sustainability Meetup, we hosted seven affinity groups at our 2024 Independent News Sustainability Summit and 10 pre-selected table talks, all led by LION members.
Over 400 members are active in our News Entrepreneur Community Slack group, an online community with nearly 1,000 total contributors.
Our Impact
Camille Padilla Dalmau, the leader of the diaspora affinity group, asked participants how they felt after their conversation during the Summit.
This is what they said
- Awesome
- Gratitude
- Warm
- Safe
- Understood
- Acompaño/Proud
- Appreciation
- Energized
“...the [affinity group] conversation was engaging, with a good balance between personal experiences and professional insights. It was particularly interesting to hear the varied perspectives on the challenges of working within an LGBTQ media organization or as LGBTQ professionals in non-LGBTQ media environments.”
— Leo Cusimano, Dallas Voice
“That was a great [affinity group] session, and I really appreciated hearing so many stories. I've always wanted to get more involved with LION and this [Summit] conference is my first chance to really do this. I look forward to looking up as much of your work as possible!”
— Sean Tubbs, Town Crier Productions
