Audit Dashboard

The LION Publishers Sustainability Audit Dashboard is an interactive, quarterly updated tool that consolidates key data from the LION Audit, which evaluates the overall business health of local, independent online newsrooms. Last updated: June 2026.

In 2025, we introduced the self-serve version of the Audit. The following information has been pulled from the nearly 450 newsrooms that have completed the assessment since then, giving us an inside look at their operations and a deeper understanding of the current state of the industry.

This dashboard was created with the support of the Google News Initiative

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How to use the dashboard

Here are some quick tips on how to use this resource:

  • Use the filters on the left-hand side of the dashboard to narrow your criteria and help you answer specific questions.
  • You can also click into the dashboard itself to narrow your searches further, and hover over graphs to see more information.
  • The top six boxes are key performance indicators. Those categories remain the same regardless of filtering, though the numbers will change as you apply filters.
  • To clear all filters, refresh the entire webpage.

Please note: This tool is not designed for mobile devices and works best on a desktop. All data was self-reported by Audit participants.

What questions can this answer?

You can use this resource at any time to answer questions like:

  • What's the median revenue of a local, independent news business?
    • How does that change by tax status?
  • What's the median number of newsletter subscribers for news businesses?
  • What kinds of news products are these news businesses producing?
    • How does that change based on organizations' stage of sustainability?
  • How many people are typically employed by these news businesses?
    • What's the breakdown by role (editorial, operations, etc.)?
  • What do the healthiest news businesses – those in the Sustaining stage of LION's maturity model – look like?
  • What do the earliest-stage news businesses, those in the Preparation stage, need most?

Questions?

Contact sustainabilityaudits@lionpublishers.com if you have any questions about this resource or would like to learn more.