Program

A holistic approach to sustainability: Lessons from the Philadelphia Media Founders Exchange Revenue Summit

Philadelphia-based media makers and entrepreneurs shared strategies for sustaining your media business through both revenue and relationships

By Hayley Slusser

July 19, 2024

A holistic approach to revenue and sustainability was the key theme at The Lenfest Institute for Journalism’s second annual Philadelphia Media Founders Exchange Revenue Summit on July 9, which brought together program alumni, Philadelphia media makers, and entrepreneurs for a day-long discussion on building sustainable businesses.

The Founders Exchange, a community-grounded accelerator supporting Philadelphia-area entrepreneurs of color, taught cohort members basic business acumen, but the Summit offered more advanced programming, touching on topics including grant writing, audience engagement, uses of generative AI, and much more. The goal of the program is to help Philadelphia media businesses plant their roots to serve the city for years to come, said Head of Philadelphia Programs Shawn Mooring.

To ensure those roots take hold, Summit speakers emphasized the need to build deep relationships with community members to understand their needs — “People are seeking answers and we’re trying to get them those answers,” said S. Mitra Kalita, co-founder and CEO of URL Media and co-founder and publisher of Epicenter NYC — while also ensuring that they take care of themselves to avoid burnout.

“It is not just a job when you’re a founder. It is your life,” said Sara M. Lomax, co-founder and president of URL Media and president and CEO of WURD Radio. “This work will extract a lot. It takes a big toll on you.”

Here are some other takeaways from the Summit:

Tell your story

Journalists are experts when it comes to telling stories about their communities, and you should utilize those same skills to tell the story of your company, brand, and mission.

Will Toms, co-founder and chief creative officer of creative agency  REC Philly, said building a brand also means building a reputation. Your marketing and promotional materials shouldn’t just advertise what content you produce, but also what kind of reputation you want to have.

Toms shared an easy, fill-in-the-blank exercise to help media professionals determine their brand identity:

I create [primary medium] for [adjective + noun] to feel [emotion] when they’re [action or state of mind].

To grow your business, Toms said you need to ensure the experience you give people in your real-life work matches up with the experience you give them digitally. He recommended creating consistent, predictable content on the platforms that matter to your audiences.

“A lot of times we think about real life, and then there’s the internet,” he said. “In the world we live in today, those two are merging and merging deeply — especially the generations coming after us.”

Grants are not free money

Grants can be a helpful revenue source to support your business or projects, but the application process requires time and effort with no guaranteed ROI.

The Lenfest Institute offers a free, asynchronous course to help newsrooms begin pursuing grants, but grant writing consultant Nadira Branch shared some additional tips with Summit attendees.

1. Before applying for a grant, you should be able to clearly state what your work entails and why it should be supported. If you can’t summarize this in just a few sentences, you’ll need to spend more time refining your project or mission before pursuing funding opportunities.

2. Think about how to cast a wider net for grant opportunities. Community media organizations can often make the case for support for several types of grants, including those funding journalism, social impact, entrepreneurship, and more. Utilize resources like Candid/GuideStar, government grant databases, or prospect research tools like WealthEngine to find funding opportunities.

3. Determine whether you’d rather write grant applications in-house or hire a consultant. Consultants can streamline the process, but they can be costly and may not be able to tell your organization’s story as thoroughly. Writing your own grant applications takes time, but the process can help you better understand your business and master your messaging.

Intro to Grant Writing course Intro to Grant Writing course

It’s all about relationships

Relationships can make a difference in the growth of your company from both an editorial and a revenue perspective.

Producing journalism that empowers people to take action is at the core of service-oriented publishers’ missions. To encourage action, REC Philly’s Toms highlighted the difference between building an “audience” and building a “community:” Building an audience is merely giving people something to watch, but building a community through trusted relationships gives people something to do.

Being consistent in your work and creating valuable content are key to building a community of supporters. Once you’ve built a network, Toms said the rest starts to fall into place, since people who trust you are more likely to promote your work.

Networking is also essential to securing revenue. When pursuing specific grants, Branch, the grant writing consultant, said connecting with program officers or past grantees is a great way to see if your project is the right fit. Consider requesting a debrief with program officers if you apply for a grant and aren’t selected. Engaging in partnerships, subcontracting opportunities, or other collaborations can also help boost your reputation and broaden your network.

Generative AI is here to stay

Generative AI is developing rapidly and creating a plethora of legal and ethical questions for publishers. But there are practical ways to use AI within your organization to help streamline your work.

Technical.ly Editorial Director Danya Henninger said some journalists may not realize they are already using AI through applications like Grammarly or Otter. AI can also be used to optimize headlines for SEO, identify key points from an article to boost understanding of stories, or even add alt text to photos.

Henninger says AI can be viewed as just another tool to help you do your work, provided that your organization implements appropriate ethics policies and ensures all content that touches AI is also human reviewed.

For the long term, newsrooms should consider creating a framework to identify an AI strategy that makes sense for their business, especially due to the constant changes in the market and the plethora of tools available, said Shelton Mercer III, founder and CEO of Virtuous Innovation, and a member of The Lenfest Institute’s Board of Managers

“Don’t be resistant to something that’s not going away,” he said. “You can ride the dragon, or you can be burned up and consumed by the dragon.”

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The Philadelphia Media Founders Exchange is a community-grounded accelerator program supporting BIPOC media entrepreneurs from The Lenfest Institute for Journalism and the Knight-Lenfest Local News Transformation Fund with additional support from Comcast NBCUniversal and the Independence Public Media Foundation.