Copy
News, information and much more for independent online news publishers. 
Alt weeklies get new life as local indie online news sites

As news hit this week that the iconic Village Voice was ending its print edition, attention turned to the growth of local independent online news sites across the country, and how many are carrying on the alt weekly tradition.

"Some local independent online news sites take a similar approach and share the DNA of alt-weeklies — free to do deep, investigative pieces, providing counterpoint to the missteps of legacy media, and serving as a guidebook to the arts, entertainment and culture of their communities," said Matt DeRienzo, LION's executive director said in a piece that Poynter did about the trend.

"Alt-weeklies helped make people locals,” wrote Nieman Lab, asking how online outlets will fill the gap left by their closures.

Related: If there’s a future for The Village Voice, it’s digital.


How to pay for local journalism: LION Summit tackles revenue

How to pay for local journalism will be a key theme of LION's annual conference in Chicago Oct. 26-28, but not in theory only. Speakers, panels and workshops will present concrete, proven ways to grow revenue at local independent online news sites.

In addition to advice, training and a lot of ideas about local advertising sales, this year's conference will feature presentations on how to launch a voluntary paid membership program, and how some local independent online news sites have had success launching paywall subscription programs.

Ted Williams, publisher of Charlotte Agenda in North Carolina, will talk about how that site made it to $1 million in revenue after only two years with an emphasis on native advertising and specialty products.


Why chain newspapers can't get readers to pay

The problem big newspaper chains are having in shift to reader revenue: Local newsrooms have been slashed.

Gatehouse and others are emphasizing "impact" as a key metric as strategies shift from advertising to subscription revenue, but the message falls flat when newspaper companies continually cut impactful local journalism.

RELATED: At the Heart of Impact Measurement, Listening to Customers.


LION Podcast: How Richland Source diversified revenue

The latest episode of the LION Podcast features a conversation with Jay Allred, publisher of Richland Source, a thriving local independent online news site in central Ohio.

Jay and Richland Source have found business success through a diversified revenue stream that includes advertising, marketing services and membership. And it has done so while serving a small Rust Belt city, staying true to its altruistic local mission, and eschewing clickbait and negativity.

Scott Brodbeck of ARLNow.com and RestonNow.com talked with Jay about Richland Source's founding, growth and future -- and about what an inevitable economic downturn may mean for LIONs and legacy media companies.


LION webinar tackles hiring, managing, paying ad sales reps

Three veteran local independent online news publishers will share advice, ideas and best practices on finding, hiring and keeping advertising sales reps, managing performance and structuring the right pay plan.

Scott Brodbeck, publisher of ARLNow.com in Virginia, Kelly Gilfillan, publisher of Home Page Media in Tennessee, and Jay Allred, publisher of Richland Source in Ohio, will lead a LION webinar for the publishers of small news organizations who've struggled with finding people to sell advertising for their site and structuring a pay plan that makes it worth their while.

This webinar is free for LION members and only $15 for non-members.


Facebook to offer subscriptions in Instant Articles

Facebook will offer subscriptions in Instant Articles, and Mark Zuckerberg says the company won't be taking a cut.

Related: Facebook has a new mission that just may benefit local publishers. Facebook will soon purge video clickbait from the News Feed. Facebook just made it easier for users to tell news organizations apart.


Newspaper circulation drops for 28th straight year

Despite online subscription surges for three of the largest U.S. newspapers, circulation and revenue continue to fall dramatically for the industry overall.

A Pew Research Center analysis of data from AAM shows that total weekday circulation for U.S. daily newspapers – both print and digital – fell 8% in 2016, marking the 28th consecutive year of declines.


News About Local Independent Online News Sites

MONTANA: Ex-Great Falls Tribune reporter launches news site in Montana.

VERMONT: VT Digger is a finalist for the Online Journalism Awards' major investigative prize, for a story on the Jay Peak ski resort.

WOMEN: Women Take the Lead at Latin America’s Digital Media Startups.


Tools and Tips: Advertising and Revenue

AD BLOCKING: Adblock Plus wins again: New court ruling backs ad blocker against media firms.

AD BUYING: Some brands are now blacklisting mainstream news sites, including Fox News, to avoid controversial topics. More than 600 global brands still feed the fake news ecosystem.

DISPLAY ADS: Why The Penny Hoarder Ditched Display Advertising (and the Money That Comes With it).

MEMBERSHIP: Lessons on Solving the Media Membership Puzzle.

NATIVE ADVERTISING: Why the top brands are thinking like publishers.

NEWSLETTERS: Email Re-Engagement, Reimagined. Girls’ Night In is an email newsletter, but it’ll also be a way for women to make friends IRL.

PODCASTING: IAB Releases First “Podcast Playbook” for Advertisers.

SEARCH: Paid-Search Advertising Still Outranks Social In Performance. Are your Google search results another kind of filter bubble? The answer seems to be: Kind of. 2017: A Year of Experimentation for Google Local Search.

SUBSCRIPTIONS: Google is reportedly working on subscription tools for publishers. Brazil’s Nexo Jornal sticks to its founding principles: Explanatory journalism, subscribers, and no ads. Press Patron is getting readers to pay what they want for news. Bill Simmons on pivoting to video, paid subscriptions and that time he almost gave up on journalism.

VIEWABILITY: Ad buying giant says video ads in news feeds don’t have to have sound on or be user-initiated to count.


Tools and Tips: Journalism and Technology

ARCHIVES: Archiving digital content such as social media should include linked objects.

AUTOMATION: Why robots won't replace journalists. Quartz created a bot that can break news — and wants to help other news orgs develop their own.

CLICKBAIT: Investigating the Influence of “Clickbait” News Headlines.

DATA: How social data can pop filter bubbles and reach new audiences. How to Collect Data Without Being Creepy. Every J-School Should Teach Data, and Here’s How.

DIVERSITY: "I am not your brown reporter." The case for representative newsrooms.

ENGAGEMENT: The Facebook page of German daily Die Welt will talk to you like a friend — with gifs, jokes, and facts. Elevating Engagement Through Design.

GRAPHICS: Mexico-based Pictoline’s graphic explainers thrive on social media (and advertisers love them too).

HATE CRIMES: Google and ProPublica team up to build a national hate crime database. With data from Google News, this new tool makes it easier for reporters to track hate crimes nationwide. White-supremacy threat demands its own beat reporters.

OPIOIDS: Four facts every journalist should know when covering the opioid epidemic.

PHOTOGRAPHY: Lessons from the Nat Geo eclipse photo dustup.

POLLUTION: Why isn’t local media covering the Clean Power Plan?

SOLUTIONS JOURNALISM: Solutions Journalism Network launches new resource center for news organizations that want to get started with solutions journalism.

SPORTS: Sports writers still struggle covering violence against women.

TRANSPARENCY: A journalist’s new podcast explores the secrets behind fact-finding.

TRAUMA: Being a Journalist is Terrible for Your Mental Health. In Charlottesville and elsewhere, U.S. journalists are being assaulted while covering the news.

TRUST: Five months in, the News Integrity Initiative is refining its focus on diversity, transparency, and trust. Understanding Trust to Strengthen Democracy: Lessons for journalism in Democracy Fund research.

VIDEO: How Social Platforms Are Using Video to Capture Audience Attention. Video series on Facebook are already driving higher engagement, which is a good sign for Facebook Watch. Great video or great writing? Do both for best audience engagement. Coming soon: A standard for cross-platform video measurement. Tool for journalists: Fader, for producing 360-degree videos on your computer.

WRITING: Tricky punctuation tips for business writers. The many pitfalls of journalese: Clarity, not clichés, should be the journalist’s lodestar.


Industry News

ALASKA: Alaska Dispatch News will be able to pay carriers, but newspaper is still on the brink.

AT&T: AT&T-Time Warner Deal, an Early Trump Target, Reaches Advanced Stage.

CANADA: Print distribution of the Globe and Mail coming to an end in Atlantic provinces.

CENSORSHIP: Tech Censorship of White Supremacists Draws Criticism From Within Industry. Who Gets to Decide Who Has a Voice Online? The Myth Of The Neutral Silicon Valley Platform Is Crumbling.

FAKE NEWS: Uncanny Valley of Fake News: How a cluster of sites posed as legitimate and, despite being exposed, got away with it. Facebook shuts down 1 million accounts per day but can't stop all 'threat actors,' security chief says. How A Global Media Company Uses Overseas Labor And A Ghost Office To Power Its Australian Edition.

HUFFPOST: The HuffPost’s tabloid-style homepage is paying dividends.

INSTAGRAM: How Instagram and Snapchat Are Benefiting From Facebook’s Declining Teen and Tween Numbers.

KANSAS CITY: Three Kansas City Star Veterans Take Buyouts As ‘Newsroom Reinvention’ Gets Underway.

LA TIMES: Tronc purges senior leadership at the Los Angeles Times. Looking Behind Tronc's Surprising Clean Sweep At L.A. Times. L.A. Times Masthead Massacre Capped a Month of Newsroom Turmoil. After a purge, the Los Angeles Times (still) searches for a future. New Los Angeles Times CEO will be paid a starting salary of $1 million.

LIBEL: Sarah Palin defamation suit: ‘Political incitement’ language was added to New York Times draft. Univision Says Lawsuit Over Deadspin Story Intended to Scare Journalists. John Oliver's legal hell is the stuff of Hulk Hogan-fueled nightmares. Media Companies Just Got More Bad News in Gawker Bankruptcy.

MEDIUM: Will clap for food: Medium rolls out a payment model for writers based on engagement.

MIC: How Mic.com exploited social justice for clicks, and then abandoned a staff that believed in it.

MOBILE: Why mobile will dominate news media by 2020.

OWNERSHIP: The Slippery Slope of the Oligarchy Media Model.

PLATFORMS: Platforms wield a worrying amount of power over news and information. Can a more decentralized web help? Who Owns the Internet? What Big Tech’s monopoly means for our culture.

POLITIFACT: Behind the unlikely success of PolitiFact and the Truth-O-Meter. In its first decade, PolitiFact helped define political fact-checking far beyond Washington, D.C.

POLLING: Fake Polls Are A Real Problem.

PRESS FREEDOM: Boston authorities should not have blocked media from covering protest.

PRINT: Fort Wayne’s News-Sentinel to cease afternoon newspaper.

SINCLAIR: Sinclair Fires Back at Deal Critics: Makes case at FCC for Tribune buy; says opponents trying to stifle competition.

STARTUPS: Startups “feel the pressure to keep up the facade of success, even when things are actually falling apart ....”

STUDENT JOURNALISTS: High school journalists who busted bogus principal aren’t done asking questions.

TRUMP: Mastering Trump’s game: Don’t get pissed. Do journalism. Trump Takes Authoritarian Stance In Portraying Journalists As Anti-American Enemy.

YELP: Can Yelp Extend Its Moment in the Sun?

YOUTUBE: YouTube starts delivering ‘breaking news’ on its homepage across platforms.


UPCOMING EVENTS

LION SUMMIT - CHICAGO: Register now! LION Publishers' annual conference will be held Oct. 26-28 in Chicago.

LION WEBINARS: LION Publishers hosts a monthly webinar series. Upcoming webinars:
* Sept. 14: Hiring, paying and managing sales reps at local independent online news sites, with ARLNow.com Publisher Scott Brodbeck, Home Page Media Publisher Kelly Gilfillan and Richland Source Publisher Jay Allred.

BUSINESS PLANNING FOR NONPROFIT NEWS: The Institute for Nonprofit News will host a one-day intensive on business planning for nonprofit news organizations Oct. 3 in Philadelphia.


Is Your LION Publishers Membership Up for Renewal?
 
For many of our LION Publishers members, it's time to renew! Your membership includes participation in the LION Publishers Den on Facebook, networking and support from fellow LION publishers, our new newsletter, discounted rates on media liability and directors and officers insurance and more. 

Plus, being a member gives you access to a members-only rate to the LION Summit – a savings of up to $175 compared to the non-member rate. If your membership is due for renewal, please go to http://www.lionpublishers.com/members/dues/renew to submit your payment. Those who opt for multi-year membership save, and easy, secure payment options are available via credit card or through Paypal. (Not sure when your membership expires? You can look it up easily on LIONPublishers.com.)
Follow on Twitter   Friend on Facebook   Forward to Friend 
Copyright © 2017 LION Publishers, All rights reserved.


Email Marketing Powered by Mailchimp
unsubscribe from this list   update subscription preferences