How can local online newsrooms best reach, and keep, their audiences?

That question keeps many news publishers up at night. In the inhospitable internet climate of 2024, between the ambivalence-to-antagonism of social media toward news and the looming threat of AI search decimating Google referrals, the need for alternatives to the two sources that were the foundation of traffic for most newsrooms of the 2010s is existential. (See a recent worrying stat from the nonprofit news sector: From 2022 to 2023, “the average number of unique monthly visitors declined by about one-third,” per the latest INN Index.)

At this inflection point, Local Independent Online News Publishers found more of its members are investing in products that connect them to audiences without a tech intermediary.¹

On Wednesday, LION released a snapshot of data about “how LION members appear to be adapting to reach their audiences,” based on newsroom responses from the last three years of its flagship LION Sustainability Audits program. The organization’s findings are based on responses from 100 newsrooms in 2022, 75 in 2023, and 90 this year, associate director of sustainability audits Andrew Rockway told me in an email. (Applications for 2024 audits remain open until Aug. 30.)

While the number of products per newsroom hasn’t changed significantly from 2022 to 2024, “the types of products LIONs create are changing,” as Rockway and research and evaluation associate Dylan Sanchez write in the brief report. “We’ve seen pronounced increases among LIONs producing newsletters (up to 95% in 2024 from 81% in 2022) and events (up to 60% in 2024 from 34% in 2021).”

Rockway and Sanchez also highlight self-reported data from these newsrooms on the most effective ways audiences find them. “We’ve seen particular growth in newsletters, in-person conversations, and events,” they note, “though the latter two may be reflective of a broader shift back to in-person engagement post-COVID.” (LION does not collect traffic data by source from publishers.)

These results also make clear that search and social media remain top sources of audience discovery for the overwhelming majority of newsrooms. Specifically, “73% of organizations noted direct search as effective in 2024, up from 56% in 2022,” the report notes. Organic social media discovery has also “remained consistently high,” with more than 75% of outlets citing it among the “most effective” sources of audience discovery for the past three years.

You can read the full report here.

1. There’s a philanthropic parallel to this traffic dependency, at LION and across the local news and news support sector: In the past, Meta Journalism Project has been a major source of funding for LION, though it no longer is. The Google News Initiative remains one of LION’s three biggest funders, per its five-year strategic plan. [↩]