What I learned from LION Publishers and its members as a European

After spending a year in the U.S. assisting LION Publishers with their Sustainability Audits data, I’m returning to Lithuania with a handful of insights which I hope will help in easing the ongoing transition toward a more resilient and thoughtful media ecosystem back home.

I was born and raised in Lithuania, in Northern Europe, and spent over a decade working in media — as a journalist in radio, TV, print, and online. Recently, I’ve shifted my focus toward media business strategy and management. Various studies show that journalists are experiencing mental health issues and that lack of managerial strategies negatively affect their job quality as well as satisfaction (Brédart, 2020; Deuze, 2023; Thompson & Chedraoui, 2023; Storm, 2024). I’ve felt that first-hand — which made me believe there must be another way to do journalism.

Modern journalism in Lithuania has around a 150-year-old tradition. Yet during part of that heritage — particularly the Soviet occupation (1940–1990) — the progress of the press culture was hindered by censorship while favoritism fostered unequally balanced relationships between those who collaborated with the regime and those who did not. Though it has been more than three decades since Lithuania’s independence, I felt that fresh perspectives about the media and media business were needed — and likely to be found elsewhere.

With the support of the Baltic-American Freedom Foundation, my pursuit of a more sustainable, values-driven media model led me to the United States — one of the oldest and most influential media markets in the world. Fortunately, I landed with the best possible team to explore these questions: LION Publishers. I was lucky enough to join them as an intern and contribute to their Sustainability Audit work with local newsrooms.

Defining sustainability

During my internship in the U.S., I was simultaneously finishing my Master’s in Global Leadership and Strategy program at ISM University of Management and Economics in Vilnius, Lithuania. My thesis focused on Stakeholders Management for Lithuanian Media Business Sustainability with a goal to understand how Lithuanian media leaders define “sustainability” and how that perception affects their management decisions.

Inspired by LION Publishers definition of sustainability which consists of Journalistic Impact, Financial Health and Operational Resilience as equally important elements, I compared it with interviews highlighting the perspective of Lithuanian media leaders.

In Lithuania, sustainability tends to be viewed mostly as financial viability or ownership stability despite economic challenges and pressure from political bodies or advertisers. Journalistic Impact and Operational Resilience are important too, though for most media outlets in Lithuania finances are so sensitive that it is challenging to think about anything else (Kėvišas et al., 2021; Reporters Without Borders, 2024; Tubys, 2024). It’s important to note that the media ecosystem in the U.S. has more financial instruments, especially when we talk about philanthropy or foundations, whose presence in Lithuania is still very much needed.

Focus on audience

One of the most visible contrasts between Lithuanian and American approaches to media management lies in the role assigned to the audience. In the U.S., what I’ve seen within the LION Publishers network, audience segmentation, engagement, and reader revenue often form the foundation of the business nowadays.

Here, outlets build their strategy around knowing who they serve by researching audience needs through, for example, direct listening, by forming customer personas based on audience habits, wants, capacities and solidifying audience funnels. More so, it’s not uncommon to find a community advisory board working alongside the newsroom — something I’ve never seen in Lithuanian outlets yet.

In Lithuania, by contrast, most newsrooms have less-defined audiences, with more transactional relationships between media and news consumers. As my research at ISM University of Management and Economics showed, some media leaders don’t conduct formal audience research or segment their user base, let alone invite external voices into strategic processes.

While journalists often speak of serving the public, in practice, there is little well structured knowledge about who that public really is. Data about what information they seek, or how they consume news, is usually interpreted using website analytics only.

I assume this perspective will change in the near future. The importance of reader revenue grows every year, and some Lithuanian media leaders name it as a priority. However, the formidable presence of Lithuania’s public broadcaster should impel commercial outlets to pursue strategies beyond the current status quo, that is, locking content behind paywalls.

News leaders talking to people and understanding their expectations for newsrooms would be a great start. I love this David Grant quote from the 2024 Independent News Sustainability Summit in Chicago: “We usually are not talking to people who love us the most.” Inspiring.

I feel grateful to be exposed to a different media business mindset here in the U.S., where journalism is perceived as service (beyond content creation too), audience as a partner and business sustainability is a shared goal between all the stakeholders.

I’m deeply grateful to Chris Krewson for not skipping over my email reaching out to connect with LION, and to Sarah Gustavus Lim and Andrew Rockway for their guidance and trust.

References

Brédart, H. (2020). Burnout among journalists, a symptom of discontent in newsrooms. ETUI. 

Deuze, M. (2023). What makes media work special is also what can make people sick. Henry Jenkins. 

Kėvišas, M. T., Brazauskas, A., Nedzveckienė, V., & Myštautaitė, M. (2020). Lietuvos regionų periodikos redaktorių požiūris į valstybinės paramos skirstymo

žiniasklaidai principus. Žurnalistikos tyrimai, 14, 39–64.

Reporters Without Borders. (n.d.). Lithuania. Reporters Without Borders. 

Storm, H. (2024). Mental health and wellbeing for journalists: A practical guide. Routledge.

Thompson, E., & Chedraoui, K. (2023). Beyond the Breaking News: Exploring Burnout, Turnover Intention and Solutions for Sustainability in Local Media [Report]. Center for Innovation and Sustainability in Local Media, UNC Hussman School of Journalism and Media.

Tubys, L. (2024).  Stakeholders management practices for Lithuanian media business sustainability [Master’s Thesis, ISM University of Management and Economics].