Growing pains are not bad news: What we’re learning from our first Sustainability 360 cohort

Update: This post was updated on July 28, 2025. A section was removed, at the publisher’s request, from a participant that exited the program early.

At LION Publishers, we know that organizations face shared challenges. But we also know that no two newsrooms are built the same and there isn’t a one-size-fits-all solution to these challenges. That’s why we started the Sustainability 360 program: to provide a tailored, hands-on approach to helping publishers reach the next stage of sustainability.

When we selected six newsrooms last fall for the first-ever Sustainability 360 cohort, we wanted to understand what helps our members address the roadblocks that prevent them from growing. It’s easy to think of money as the biggest factor in newsroom growth. And while money matters (we know, it really matters), we’ve seen through multiple programs that financial support alone won’t solve every challenge for news publishers. 

Growth isn’t just about sizing up your budget, your staff, your ambitions. It’s about navigating the complexities that come with it. As these members in our pilot push beyond their early stages, they’re encountering new obstacles that require different skills, strategies, and support systems than the ones that got them here. But here’s the thing: growing pains aren’t necessarily bad news. They are a healthy sign of progress. And with that growth comes new, exciting challenges that we, at LION, are thrilled to support.

If your newsroom is facing growing pains, here’s what you can learn from our cohort’s experiences.

1. Align your goals with a long-term vision

Many cohort members joined the program with a specific challenge, such as increasing revenue or growing their audience, only to realize they needed a broader strategy. A key component of the Sustainability 360 program is helping participants define a clear, actionable North Star goal to ensure their efforts remain focused, measurable, and aligned with their long-term vision and capacity.

For Mission Local, the program shifted from a narrow revenue goal to a larger organizational transition. “We started with one question: How do we grow our advertising revenue?” said Joe Rivano, senior editor at Mission Local, “but through coaching calls, we’ve expanded that focus in a great way.” As they worked through their coaching sessions, they realized they needed to take a step back and think about what kind of newsroom they wanted to become. Mission Local was already evolving from a training ground for student journalists into a newsroom of mid-career reporters. That shift requires a different level of structure, funding, and internal systems.

Originally known for hyperlocal neighborhood reporting, they had also begun covering city-wide issues without a formal strategy. Now, the team is developing a transition plan to guide that expansion more intentionally. “We’ve been thinking about who we should be meeting within new communities, how to approach community members, and making sure we are not stepping on the toes of existing publications or nonprofits,” Joe said.

Beyond editorial strategy, they also had to consider the operational and financial systems needed to sustain their growth. Hiring a new reporter for a neighborhood is one thing, but securing sustainable funding for that role is another. They have been thinking about how to structure fundraising efforts, whether funding should come from donors or other revenue sources, and the internal policies necessary to ensure stability.

“We identified the need for clearly structured job descriptions, salary tables, and benefits packages, especially as we transition into a larger, city-wide newsroom,” he explained. Over the next few months, they plan to finalize the salary tables, revenue metrics, and other operational structures to promote long-term sustainability.

As Mission Local expands, audience feedback is also playing a central role in this planning process. They are preparing to launch a survey to better understand audience perceptions, asking whether readers still see Mission Local as a neighborhood-based outlet or already recognize it as a city-wide publication. They also hope to gather insights into which neighborhoods need more coverage and where their presence might not be necessary.

Their participation in the program has not only helped them clarify their editorial and financial strategy but has also given them the structure and confidence to grow in a way that aligns with their mission. “This is forcing us to think about things we might not have prioritized otherwise, and that is exactly what we needed,” Joe said. “We are feeling optimistic about our progress and where we are headed.”

2. Focus on building fundraising capacity

For many small newsrooms, fundraising starts as a personal effort. Leaders tap into their networks, apply for grants, and bring in revenue wherever (and whenever) they can. But at some point, this approach hits a ceiling. Sustaining and growing a newsroom requires structured, ongoing fundraising efforts which often means making a first-time hire for a dedicated revenue role.

When The Buckeye Flame joined the Sustainability 360 program, they weren’t entirely sure what they wanted to focus on. “We wanted to work on sustainability,” said Ken Schneck, editor of The Buckeye Flame. “But through the discovery process, we realized it was about more than just securing funding. It was about building the right foundation to sustain that growth long-term.”

Now, they are hiring their first development director, defining clear fundraising metrics, and creating personnel policies that support long-term financial and operational health. “Hiring this role is a big step for us,” Ken said. “We’ve never had a dedicated fundraising position before, and we need to ensure we’re setting this person up for success.”

Figuring out how to do that hasn’t been easy. Initially, the board wanted to issue a request for proposals (RFP) to fill the position. Ken wasn’t convinced it was the right move, even though it seemed like the simplest way forward. With guidance from their coach Kimberly Spencer, they reframed the conversation and proposed a traditional job description first, with the option to pivot to an RFP later. “I was nervous, but the board signed on immediately,” he said.

That shift changed everything. Instead of outsourcing fundraising as a temporary fix, The Buckeye Flame started thinking long-term. But hiring for a role they had never had before brought new questions. What does a successful development director actually do? How do you hire someone for a role you’ve never had before? And once they’re on board, how do you make sure they succeed?

To navigate this transition, Ken has received hands-on support, from refining the job description to discovering new posting opportunities he hadn’t considered. “We just developed a rubric to evaluate candidates, and Kimberly is reviewing it,” he said. “But the most invaluable part will be her support with onboarding. That’s huge because I’ve never supervised a development director before.”

One of the key takeaways from the coaching process was shifting how the organization defined success in fundraising. The board initially wanted the development director to raise enough funding to cover their salary in the first year. “Kimberly was great at helping us navigate that conversation,” Ken said. “She’s going to help us develop key performance indicators (KPIs), which, apparently, are a thing! I had no idea.”

Instead of expecting immediate, high-dollar returns, The Buckeye Flame is now looking at fundraising in a more strategic way which includes setting incremental goals, focusing on donor cultivation, and ensuring they build a long-term pipeline of supporters. “We’ve never really asked for anything,” Ken admitted. “We have a couple of foundations that support us, but we haven’t done a big push. This role will help us tell our story and turn that into sustainable revenue.”

But the coaching process also surfaced deeper operational needs beyond fundraising. The Buckeye Flame lacked structured employment policies, including bereavement leave, something that became glaringly clear when a staff member experienced a personal loss.“

One of our staff writers suddenly lost a close family member,” Ken shared. “He was gone for over a month all on paid leave because we don’t have a policy for bereavement, even as we have an unwritten policy on doing everything we can to support our staff. This situation made us realize we need support in formalizing policies — not just for this, but across the board.” Through this program, they will also receive specialized HR support to develop employment structures that align with their growing organization. “We should have more policies than we do, and we basically have none,” Ken admitted. “Moving forward, we’re making that a priority.”

[This section was removed. See note at top of post.]

4. You must overcome the ‘too many hats’ syndrome

When Luke Baumgarten and Valerie Osier at RANGE Media joined the Sustainability 360 program, they felt like they were trying to fix everything at once. Revenue strategy, audience growth, advertising, you name it. “There’s just so much work to do,” said managing editor Valerie. “And I think we both tend to get overwhelmed by the totality of it.”

Running a newsroom with just four people means wearing multiple hats, often at the same time. But their coach, Celeste LeCompte, helped them focus on a single priority that would have the biggest impact across all areas: audience development. If they could grow their readership, Celeste advised, the rest of their membership revenue, advertising, and long-term sustainability would follow.

That clarity made all the difference. Instead of spinning in circles, they started executing a focused strategy. But before they could move forward, they realized they needed to address an underlying issue: defining their own roles. Luke, the publisher at RANGE, was out fundraising, networking, and keeping the operation afloat. Valerie had naturally stepped into a managing editor position, keeping the newsroom running day to day. But without formal recognition of those roles, the imbalance was weighing on them.

“It was almost like partner therapy,” Valerie said, recalling the coaching sessions with Celeste and HR consultant Deb Brown. Through those conversations, they finally defined their titles: Luke as publisher and editor and Valerie as managing editor, enabling them to collaborate more effectively rather than feeling like they were constantly pulling in different directions.

“It’s foundational,” Luke said. “Without it, I think we’d be in a lot more pain right now.”

Work-life balance remains a challenge. One of their goals was to cap their workweeks at 40 hours and cut down on the relentless context-switching that makes small teams feel stretched to the limit. RANGE is part of a co-op that is experiencing some struggles right now, which is adding another layer of uncertainty to their workload. But they both agree that if they hadn’t defined their leadership roles earlier, the current challenges would feel even more overwhelming.

“The clarity we have at RANGE is what’s making all this extra work manageable,” Luke said. “It’s not fixing work-life balance right now, but it’s helping us manage what we have to do.”

RANGE’s long-term vision is to have the majority of its revenue come from members. They are aiming to increase their non-grant revenue to $200,000, up from approximately $95,000 right now. But to get there, they need to grow their audience and that means aligning all their moving parts. The program has helped them streamline their efforts across different support networks. “We’ve been setting audience goals in so many different places,” Valerie said. “Now, we can unify those goals and make sure they’re reinforced across everything we do.”

This clarity is already leading to new opportunities. Luke recently met with a fractional marketing officer who was so impressed by RANGE’s work that she offered to help them grow their audience for free. “She told me, ‘I have all the paying clients I need — I want to do something that fills my soul,’” Luke recalled.

That kind of community trust and goodwill has taken nearly five years to build. Now, they’re executing on that trust, putting the right team in place, and finally scaling their membership strategy.

5. Fixing your foundation before you scale

Merging news organizations is one of those things that’s easier said than done. When Ctrl+P set out to merge multiple New Mexico independent newspapers under one umbrella, publisher Pat Davis had a clear goal: achieve financial sustainability through shared resources and streamlined operations. The reality, however, has been far more complex.

The organization now oversees seven publications, two of which operate as nonprofit entities under contractual agreements. Each newspaper came with its own financial books, advertising processes, sales kits, and editorial teams. While Ctrl+P successfully unified its tech infrastructure on the backend, it quickly became apparent that its operations were still deeply siloed.

Over the summer, Pat struggled to get a clear picture about their financial health. Employees worked across multiple publications, and advertising revenue was cross-sold between papers, but assigning those funds correctly proved difficult. The lack of a consolidated budgeting system made it nearly impossible to track expenses, revenue, and overall sustainability.

“The finance part had to come first,” said Pat. “We realized that before we could figure out the right size of our workforce, or where to cut or invest, we needed a single financial system across all publications.”

Then, things got even more complicated.

Just before joining the Sustainability 360 program, Ctrl+P finalized the acquisition of a newspaper in Santa Fe that was overdue for an injection of fresh revenue strategies and across-the-board technology upgrades. The acquisition was great news but threw off Ctrl+P’s financial trajectory. “We were on track to pay off all our debt, and then suddenly, we picked up a huge new obligation,” Pat said. “It set us back a year.”

The coaching sessions have helped Ctrl+P build a strategic roadmap for these financial challenges. Rather than scrambling for an immediate solution, the team has taken a deliberate approach to restructuring their financial processes by taking a couple of steps at a time:

• They are consolidating and standardizing billing, expense tracking, and revenue allocation across all seven publications.
• They shifted their debt management strategy after realizing their debt load was manageable, but cash flow was the real issue.
• They leveraged financial planning to attract investors and even received an acquisition offer, though they ultimately turned it down.

The every-other-week coaching check-ins forced Ctrl+P to pause, evaluate, and iterate its approach. “I probably wouldn’t have made time for this otherwise,” Pat admitted. “We thought we needed to refinance all of our debt, but through this process, we realized it was really about managing cash flow. That changed our whole approach.”

Beyond finances, Ctrl+P faced another challenge: the leadership team of experienced reporters was new to management, especially across multiple newsrooms. That proved especially challenging on the finance side, where a key employee who was expected to grow into a C-suite role found a better fit coaching a smaller team with a more limited scope of duties.

With that change in place, Pat now faces another tough decision: finding a professional finance expert to lead the work. “I need a real finance person at this point,” Pat said. “We’re too big, too complicated. This isn’t a ‘learn as you go’ situation anymore.”

Based on his journey, Pat has a hard-earned piece of advice for independent publishers considering mergers or acquisitions: Fix your foundation before you scale. “Yes, we grew quickly. Yes, we jumped in to save some papers that were failing. But what we’ve learned is that we should have gotten things right in the small areas first,” Pat said. “Each of those papers needed a plan and a process before we tried to merge them all at once.”

If Ctrl+P had waited to fix structural issues before acquiring more papers, the road could have been smoother. Instead, the team is now backtracking to unify HR, finance, and management processes across seven publications simultaneously. The coaching through Sustainability 360 is helping address the current challenges, but for other newsrooms considering merging, acquiring, or even just deepening shared services, Pat’s experience offers a roadmap for what to expect:

• Standardize financial and operational processes before bringing more publications into the fold
• Plan and budget for a cash dip and longer transition time than you think with any new acquisition, especially where revenue and processes are highly dependent on relationships with a few key staff, vendors, or former owners or where upgrades are required
• Invest in leadership development early to ensure newsroom managers are equipped to handle leading in a larger organization
• Recognize when internal roles need to shift. Not everyone who excelled at a smaller publication will be the right fit at scale

Pat remains optimistic about Ctrl+P’s trajectory. With a clearer financial structure, strategic leadership shifts, and a plan to stabilize operations, the organization is on a sustainable path forward. “We’ll get there,” Pat said. “Just one step at a time.”

6. Expanding strategically to new markets

For LOOKOUT Publications, expansion isn’t just about growth. It’s about survival.

The current political climate has made Arizona an increasingly hostile place for LGBTQ+ communities and other marginalized groups. A new administration, one they describe as the most anti-LGBTQ+ in U.S. history, is already targeting news organizations and nonprofits. Meanwhile, a recently passed ballot measure, Proposition 314, grants police sweeping authority to pull over Black and brown individuals and demand proof of citizenship. It’s eerily similar to Arizona’s controversial SB 1070, which once gave law enforcement broad powers to target undocumented immigrants.

“The writing is on the wall,” said Jake Hylton, LOOKOUT Publications’ executive director. “The work we’re doing is needed, it’s powerful, and it’s making great changes. But individually, between Joseph (founder and editor-in-chief of LOOKOUT) and I, it’s not super safe for us to be here. This doesn’t mean we’re ceasing operations,” Jake emphasized. “If anything, we’re increasing our presence here.”

But Arizona is just the beginning. The challenges facing queer communities in the state are not unique. Across the country, there are LGBTQ+ populations in need of accountability journalism, investigative reporting, and service-oriented news. That reality has propelled LOOKOUT’s next big move: expanding into a broader Southwest regional bureau and beyond.

The first step will be expanding LOOKOUT’s Southwest presence to include coverage in Nevada, Utah, Colorado, and New Mexico. From there, the organization is considering two additional expansion hubs in the Midwest and in the Mid-Atlantic. They have narrowed down two potential headquarters for this next phase: Chicago or Philadelphia. Both cities offer strong community support, access to major philanthropic networks, and proximity to states where LGBTQ+ journalism is especially needed.

“We’re at a bit of a standstill,” Jake said. “Both locations make sense, but we’re not sure which one will be the best fit. So we’re going to let data to help guide the decision.” To make an informed choice, LOOKOUT is working with its coach, Kimberly Spencer, and consulting firms to conduct feasibility studies for each potential region. These studies will assess factors like audience demand, philanthropic support, and local media ecosystems.

“We need to understand not just the need for LGBTQ+ journalism, but the capacity for funding it,” Jake explained.

LOOKOUT is in early discussions with regional funders for its Midwest and Mid-Atlantic expansions and was invited to apply for a grant that could fund a feasibility study.

In parallel, LOOKOUT is working with consulting firms to build a tiered, multi-phase expansion plan that allows for flexibility and prevents financial overextension. “When people build expansion plans, they often map out steps one through ten and assume they’ll hit every milestone,” Jake said. “But things change, money dries up, costs shift, and suddenly the whole plan falls apart. We’re building a model where each phase stands on its own. If only phase one gets funded, we can still operate at that level while working toward phase two.”

A key part of LOOKOUT’s expansion strategy is ensuring they don’t step on the toes of existing LGBTQ+ media outlets. “We know there are other LGBTQ+ publishers out there,” Jake said. LOOKOUT has already worked with many of these outlets, including The Buckeye Flame, Philly Gay News, Windy City Times, and Queer Kentucky. Instead of competing, they are committed to building partnerships through republishing agreements and joint investigations.

“The Sustainability 360 program has been integral to our success,” Jake said. “We didn’t even know we’d be looking at expansion when we applied. But now, it’s clear that this is the path forward.”

Where we are going

Our team at LION knows that growth looks different depending on an organization’s stage. There are strong resources available for early-stage newsrooms finding their footing, as well as for more established organizations that have the budget to pay for specialized support. But there’s a gap in between — newsrooms that are beyond the startup phase but not yet at a level where they can independently afford the kind of guidance we provide. 

That’s why we chose a specific lane for Sustainability 360 — organizations in the Building and Maintaining stages — to understand what makes growth possible and what it takes to accelerate it by deploying what we do best: one-on-one coaching, connecting members with subject-matter experts and each other, and our newly built back-office support function. Receiving direct HR and financial support, in addition to our strategic coaching and peer support components, should help newsrooms save on costs and optimize their resources.

We’ve already learned that growing pains aren’t just logistical, they’re also emotional. As teams grow and founders step back, newsroom leaders are confronting questions about their mission and the kind of organization they want to build. Making space through programming to process these transitions and think about long-term strategic solutions and not just temporary band-aids is just as important as the tactical day-to-day work.

And we recognize that traditional quantitative metrics often fail to capture the full impact of programs. Many of the most meaningful wins, as expressed by participants, aren’t measured by year-over-year revenue growth or audience size increases. Instead, it’s the subtle yet foundational shifts, those newly acquired leadership mindsets, the operational efficiencies, and the strategic clarity that can create a lasting ripple effect in a newsroom’s growth trajectory.

Currently, 90% of our member organizations are in the Building and Maintaining stages, which is why we’re thrilled to announce that we’re expanding this program to serve 40 newsrooms this summer. Stay tuned for more information!