Recognizes a LION member that has made significant progress toward achieving sustainability through strengthening its operational resilience, financial health, and journalistic impact.

Judges are looking for initiatives that show consistency as opposed to one-off efforts across our three pillars of sustainability: operational resilience, financial health, and journalistic impact. Specifically, they are looking for organizations that show:

• Strong evidence of recent implementation of policies supporting staff, promoting well-being, manageable workloads, and/or streamlining operations for efficiency.
• Strong evidence of financial management practices or strategies that positively impacted revenue growth or overcame significant financial challenges during this period.
• Tangible impacts on the community resulting from coverage of crucial issues.

Recognizes a LION member — founded after January 1, 2023 — that exhibits, even in its very early stages, a clearly defined commitment to working toward achieving sustainability through operational resilience, financial health, and journalistic impact.

Judges are looking for organizations that show:

• Evidence of initial steps taken to establish culture, systems, processes, and/or policies for supporting staff and managing growth.
• Evidence of steps taken to plan for revenue growth and adopt best practices for financial management.
• Clear evidence of the quality and reach of the journalism produced since its launch, leveraging their existing capacity and resources.

Recognizes a LION member that has made significant progress toward strengthening its operational resilience by establishing processes, policies, and a people-centered company culture designed to support staff, manage growth, and promote sustainability.

Judges are seeking initiatives that demonstrate new or improved processes and policies designed to support staff, manage growth, and promote sustainability. We understand that building a healthy and resilient work culture takes time, and judges won’t be expecting perfect processes and systems. Instead, they will be evaluating the intentionality and results of those efforts. Specifically, they are looking for organizations that show:

• Strong evidence of recent implementation of policies or practices designed to support employee well-being and mental health and foster a healthy work environment and sustainable workloads.
• Efficiency and effectiveness in the operational processes established that benefit staff and the organization as a whole.
• Increasing engagement and satisfaction by team members within the organization.

Recognizes a LION member that has made significant progress toward strengthening its financial health by developing a plan for earning money, managing a budget, and/or monitoring revenue and expenses to extend its financial runway. This can also include the development of a successful and creative strategy to grow or diversify revenue while positively impacting their financial health.

Judges are looking for initiatives that have a successful and creative strategy to grow or diversify revenue while positively impacting their financial health. The dollar amount isn't the only metric for success, your own growth against your goals is most important. Specifically, they are looking for organizations that show:

• Strong evidence of strategies for proactively managing financial health, including effective budget management, revenue and expenses monitoring, and/or cash flow monitoring.
• Strong evidence of strategy to increase net revenue and/or decrease expenses, which positively impact their financial health and advance their mission.
• Clear and demonstrable evidence of ability to plan and implement policies and processes to manage financial risk, including but not limited to planning for worse and best-case scenarios, building and deploying reserves strategically, and diversifying their revenue sources.

Recognizes a LION member that has consistently produced journalism with meaningful and demonstrable impact in its communities.

Judges are looking for initiatives that show consistent efforts to produce journalism that has meaningful and demonstrable impact in the community as opposed to one-off efforts. Impact Architects define impact as the change to the status quo on the individual, community, and structural level. Therefore, judges are looking for organizations that show:

• Tangible, tracked, and measured outcomes or changes resulting from the organization’s reporting at the individual, and/or community, and/or structural level.
• Strong evidence of high levels of community engagement in several stages of the reporting process.
• Evidence that the organization intentionally produced and distributed their journalism so that their intended audience could access the news and information they need.

Recognizes a LION member that has achieved general excellence in journalistic impact by demonstrating an intentional and systematized approach to community engagement that consistently tells stories for, with, and by the people they are working to serve.

Judges are looking for initiatives demonstrating an intentional and systematized approach to community engagement. Specifically, they are looking for organizations that:

• Show strong evidence of understanding their community information needs.
• Can make a strong case for the impact this work had on the community it serves.
• Go beyond traditional journalistic narratives to highlight solutions and opportunities for change using a range of innovative methods to gather information and tell stories.

Recognizes a LION member that has successfully formed a short-term or long-term collaboration with at least one other organization to positively affect their journalistic impact, financial health, and/or operational resilience. Entries can include both business-focused and/or editorial-focused collaborations, however the most successful entries will be able to demonstrate a positive impact on more than one of LION’s pillars of sustainability (journalistic impact, financial health, and operational resilience). 

Judges especially want to hear how your initiative improved your operational resilience, financial health, and journalistic impact. Specifically, they are looking for organizations that show:

• Strong evidence of the extent to which the organizations involved in the collaboration developed, implemented, or streamlined processes and systems to support staff by generating buy-in and facilitating agreement among all parties.
• Strong evidence of how the collaboration supported fundraising or enhanced the utilization of existing funds in a more sustainable and strategic way for all organizations involved.
• Strong evidence of how the collaboration enabled the organizations involved to cover more challenging stories, reach a wider audience, and/or share resources and expertise.

Recognizes a LION member that developed a successful and creative short-term or long-term product to strengthen their journalistic impact, financial health, and/or operational resilience. We use News Product Alliance’s definition of a news product: “A defined article, series, program, or other content created by a news organization to meet the needs of news consumers, membership and subscription programs, and streaming services.”

Judges are looking for products. Specifically, they are looking for products that:

• Are guided by a deep understanding of how users and the community interact with the product and prioritize their needs.
• Are iterative by nature, which means including cycles of building, gathering user feedback, and improving the product.
• Advance an existing business goal or create a new source of revenue for the organization.