LION Publishers has a new strategic plan and mission statement

The independent news industry is always changing. At LION Publishers, we’ve worked hard to thoughtfully evolve alongside the hundreds of organizations we support, adapting our offerings to meet new challenges and emerging opportunities.

In 2023, we launched a five-year strategic plan with three key goals: setting the standard for sustainability in independent news businesses, identifying our members’ stages of sustainability, and helping them move closer to sustainability. 

Fast-forward to 2025 – three years ahead of schedule – we, by and large, achieved these goals. So we embarked on a new strategic planning process, thanks to generous support from Google. We built on the previous plan’s foundation, engaged core groups of internal and external stakeholders, and drew on insights from our successes from the past couple of years.

Today, we’re excited to share our vision for LION’s future with you. 

Our new three-year strategic plan contains this North Star goal, which LION’s board of directors unanimously voted to adopt as our mission statement at their September meeting: 

“LION empowers individuals and institutions to make data-driven decisions that strengthen independent news businesses and the environment in which they operate.”

LION’s previous mission statement was “to strengthen the local news industry by helping independent news publishers build more sustainable businesses.” Since adopting it in 2023, though, we’ve focused our work – through the Sustainability Audits program – and grown it to encompass policy and advocacy in states like California, Oregon, Washington, and Connecticut.

“Two key values at LION Publishers state that we operate as systems thinkers and are committed to iterating on our work to ensure we’re helping the field and our constituency to the best of our ability,” said Chris Krewson, executive director of LION. “Our new strategic plan allows us to live out those values and help the field meet this moment of extreme disruption, challenge, and opportunity.”

Key priorities

To advance our North Star, we’ve identified five priorities to guide our focus and decision-making through 2029:

• Programs & Products: Support news providers in assessing their business strengths and taking action to increase revenue, capacity, and impact in service of their communities. 
• Field Building: Become the go-to thought partner for policymakers, funders, and donors to make data-driven decisions that support a healthier information ecosystem.
• Organizational Culture: Cultivate a values-driven internal and external LION community that supports interdependence, authenticity, and belonging. 
• Operational Sustainability: Enhance/optimize LION’s internal systems to support operational efficiency and scale services. 
• Financial Health: Diversify revenue to support LION’s financial health.

Specific objectives for each are outlined in the full plan, including:

• Ensuring assessment tools and methodologies remain relevant and responsive to the evolving needs of news providers and the broader field (e.g., forthcoming Audits for Spanish-language providers as well as independent creators)
• Collaborating with international journalism-serving organizations to expand the Sustainability Audit’s relevance to new geographies
• Forming and co-leading state-level coalitions of independent local news providers to educate and organize for favorable policies/legislation

What this changes

As we roll out this plan, we’re making some changes that better support our North Star and expand our reach:

• We’re moving away from being a membership organization that offers programs toward becoming a news business strengthening organization that offers a membership program. 
  • What this means: Over the next three years, more non-members and a broader range of independent news providers will be eligible for support. Some members-only benefits will remain, but instead of acting as a gatekeeper, we intend to open our doors and share more resources with the wider ecosystem. Membership isn’t going away; it just won’t be a hard requirement for most LION programs.
    
• We’re updating our name from “Local, independent news publishers” to “Local and independent news publishers.” 
  • What this means: The products and services LION provides can and already do support non-local independent news businesses, so this adjustment simply acknowledges that. For example, our policy work currently benefits all independent online news businesses, especially small ones whose interests are often overlooked. This change also allows news creators to formally apply for LION membership.

What this doesn’t change

Our new strategic plan reaffirms LION’s central focus on the business side of news. We see our role as both a trusted partner to independent news organizations and a critical intermediary in the journalism support landscape.

LION helps individual organizations strengthen their business models, which also enables us to identify broader patterns, generate actionable insights, and translate our findings into scalable tools, products, and resources.

We’re going to increase our field-building impact by working more closely with partners, funders, and legislators to advance programs, funding, and policies that strengthen the environment for independent news publishers. 

We’ll continue our commitment to doing this work in partnership with news business leaders. Be on the lookout for calls to participate in focus groups, learn about policy initiatives in your area, and test new opportunities in 2027.

What’s next

We’ll start with the objectives under each strategic priority. Here are a few of the things we’ll be working on in 2027:

• Rethinking our convening and celebration strategies to encourage impactful in-person LION community-building
• Creating tailored versions of our signature Audit to support even more types of news entrepreneurs
• Revamping our membership criteria to reflect the aforementioned changes and broaden eligibility
• Continuing to build critical relationships with legislators and piloting state-based ‘fly-ins’ to help develop local news leaders into effective participants in the democratic process
• Building relationships with local and regional funders and supporting the incorporation of Sustainability Audits into their grantmaking and evaluation strategies

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Read our three-year strategic plan, and drop us a line if:

• You’re interested in funding our work: shellyhunter@lionpublishers.com
• You’re interested in partnering with LION on a program or Sustainability Audits: chriskrewson@lionpublishers.com

You can also:

• Donate directly to LION
• Sign up for our industry newsletter to learn more about our work and upcoming opportunities
• Apply to join our News Entrepreneur Community Slack to connect with peers and supporters