Carrie Jones with Bar Harbor Story in Maine shared a photo of her dogs, who really wanted a bite of the chocolates she received (they didn’t get any!) She also celebrated that her news business’s gross annualized revenue increased by 52% in 2025.

Carrie Jones with Bar Harbor Story in Maine shared a photo of her dogs, who really wanted a bite of the chocolates she received (they didn’t get any!) She also celebrated that her news business’s gross annualized revenue increased by 52% in 2025.

Awards Engagement Citizen and community news

LION Publishers

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RJI Online
RJI Community-Centered Symposium

This was the first time in my role as Community Manager at LION that I’ve created a project with the goal of deepening a cohort’s engagement with each other virtually. Importantly, a key piece of this project was to send every cohort member a physical gift, bringing the program out of their computers and into their real world. 

We sent each of the 37 participating news businesses a box of chocolates in the mail, with one simple ask: Upon receiving your “sweet treat,” please share a win in the cohort’s private Slack channel. The wins submitted by cohort participants ranged from program-related successes, to broader newsroom achievements, to personal celebrations.

A few examples:

  • Carol Robidoux with Ink Link News in New Hampshire focused on an organizational achievement winning a collaborative journalism award along with the Granite State News Collaborative.
  • Bob Carr with We-Ha.com in Connecticut celebrated continually selling out the organization’s ad space.
  • Liz Gotthelf shared the six-year anniversary of her news business, Saco Bay News.
An award in the 2025 New England Better Competition for first place in the Excellence in newsroom collaboration and partnerships category

Other members of the cohort celebrated breaking audience metric records, increasing their news businesses’ annual gross revenue, and how much they appreciate what they are learning while working with their coaches through this LION program.

I learned that there is power in opening up the celebration of achievements to go beyond the professional wins, and it’s a helpful way to increase engagement! With this cohort of program participants, expanding the conversation to personal and regional topics outside of the focus of the program allowed for connections to be made among people who live near each other or visit the town where another participant is based. For facilitating learning and community building remotely, it was helpful to ground the engagement project with physical, mailed items.

Carol Robidoux with Ink Link News in New Hampshire shared a photo she took with Dawn DeAngelis from New Hampshire PBS and Melanie Plenda, Executive Director of GSNC, celebrating their collaborative win of an award at the 2025 New England Better Newspaper Competition.
Carol Robidoux with Ink Link News in New Hampshire shared a photo she took with Dawn DeAngelis from New Hampshire PBS and Melanie Plenda, Executive Director of GSNC, celebrating their collaborative win of an award at the 2025 New England Better Newspaper Competition.

Logistically, I would advise others interested in trying a similar project to find a service that allows everyone receiving a gift to submit their mailing details so the gift can be sent directly to them, as opposed to having to mail all the items yourself. I used Snappy Gifts, which allowed for this approach, and it saved me time and complications with mailing.

Contributed by Natalie Van Hoozer

Cite this article

Van Hoozer, Natalie (2026, June 2). LION Publishers. Reynolds Journalism Institute. Retrieved from: https://rjionline.org/news/lion-publishers/