Resources
Inspiration
Media Kits
A media kit summarizes your audience demographics and product offerings for advertisers and other prospective clients or partners. Here are some examples:
Inspiration
Business plan/pitch
A business plan and pitch deck can help you explain your business idea to funders, partners, and other potential stakeholders. Here are examples of two business pitch decks and a business plan:
Inspiration
Ethics/Editorial Independence Policies
An ethics and editorial independence policy can help you earn trust with your community by explaining how you earn revenue, make editorial decisions, and avoid conflicts of interest. Here are some policies to draw inspiration from when developing your own.
The Institute for Nonprofit News’ Donor Transparency and Editorial Independence policies.
Template
Advertising contract
The Current shared this scope of work contract that it uses with its advertisers.
Template
Freelancer/contractor agreement
The Beacon shared this agreement that it uses with freelancers and other independent contractors.
Template
Simple budget template
City Bureau’s Harry Backlund created this budget template for a LION Skills Series.
Tool
Data tools
The Google News Initiative’s free data tools help news organizations make data-driven business and editorial decisions.
Template
Audience research templates
WhereBy.Us’s Rebekah Monson created research templates to help with three types of user research: interviews, surveys and usability tests.
Guide
Reader Revenue
The GNI Reader Revenue Playbook helps established digital news publishers develop and refine a strategy for earning revenue from its audience.
Guide
Membership
The Membership Puzzle Project’s Membership Guide helps established digital news publishers design, launch, and grow a successful membership program.
Guide
Building trust with readers
The Trusting News Project collected dozens of examples of how newsrooms built trust with their readers through audience engagement and education.
Template
Culture building: Allyship
Consultant Emma Carew Grovum wrote a post on how to be an ally in the newsroom and created this template to think about what allyship looks like for an individual and for a newsroom.
Guide
Hiring tips and best practices
OpenNews published a series of posts detailing how newsrooms “hacked” their hiring process.
Guide
Starting a nonprofit news organization
The Institute for Nonprofit News offers specific resources for starting a nonprofit newsroom in its Startup Guide.
Template
Cash flow forecasting template
When COVID-19 hit, the Project Oasis team created a template to help publishers answer the question, "What steps can you take to maximize cash and, thereby, extend as long a time frame as possible that you’ll be able to operate during the crisis?" Here’s how to use this template.
Guide
Leveraging Radio for News Site Development
Townsquare Media offers a detailed guide on leveraging broadcast radio to launch standalone local news sites.
Inspiration
North American Startups Lab Report
A comprehensive recap of the inaugural GNI Startups Lab in North America, which documents the learnings and strategies which the graduated publishers are using to build their businesses.