Nineteen media organizations are collaborating on revenue strategies, emerging technology and experiments designed to strengthen their long-term sustainability.
For family-owned and independent media organizations, finding the time and resources to test new business ideas can be a significant challenge.
Local Media Association’s Family and Independent Media Sustainability Lab (FIMS Lab) is working to change that through hands-on coaching, peer collaboration and funded experiments.
In the latest episode of LMA’s Keep It Local podcast, host Ryan Welton speaks with John M. Humenik, LMA’s chief strategy and operations officer and FIMS Lab project director, about the program’s progress and the lessons emerging from its work.
The lab now includes 19 participating organizations across two cohorts, with the second cohort joining in April 2025.
A central component of the program is monthly one-on-one coaching, where publishers and their teams work with experienced media leaders to refine strategies, address challenges and identify opportunities.
The program also provides $10,000 stipends for experiments that support participating organizations’ existing business strategies, including revenue growth and audience development.
Humenik says those experiments are producing valuable lessons, even when the original ideas evolve.
Among the areas being explored are artificial intelligence tools for advertising sales, new approaches to video storytelling and interactive digital experiences.
One example is The Post and Courier’s SC Travels project, which incorporated interactive video produced by Light Touch Media to help audiences explore South Carolina tourism content.
Humenik also describes how a smaller media organization used its experiment to begin producing video, equipping staff with cameras and developing new storytelling capabilities.
Beyond the individual projects, collaboration is one of the lab’s defining features. Participants share experiences, offer advice and help other organizations avoid mistakes they have already encountered.
FIMS Lab is supported by the Knight Foundation and Google News Initiative.
Looking ahead, LMA plans to share case studies documenting the experiments, their impacts and the lessons participating organizations learned along the way.
Keep It Local is a podcast from Local Media Association featuring conversations with the people building the future of sustainable local journalism.
***
Would you like to sponsor a future episode of Keep It Local? Our membership is comprised of more than 3,000 local media companies of every size and medium. We have a variety of ways to get you in front of key decision-makers within the industry.
🎧 Listen on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/506pCINz3AswLf7yweWbRt
🎧 Listen on Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/how-fims-lab-is-helping-independent-media-turn-ideas/id1808196993?i=1000801059625
🎧 Watch on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G6VEUsd1f9s
If you’ve listened to and enjoyed this podcast, please take a moment to leave us a review. That helps platform algorithms surface the content so that it can benefit other newsrooms.
Editor’s note: Artificial Intelligence was used to transcribe the podcast and create a summary, which was then edited for accuracy and clarity. The thumbnail accompanying this story and the YouTube video embedded in it was created in ChatGPT with instructions to not alter the people in the photo, only to blur the background and add graphics.