Evaluate your financial sustainability

The News Sustainability Project is a collaboration between the Google News Initiative, FT Strategies, and the news industry to understand, measure and enable what drives sustainability for publishers across the world.

The project defines Sustainability as:

• Being able to fulfill your journalistic mission over the long-term
• Having the financial stability to invest in quality journalism
• Adapting as your market and audiences evolve

The News Sustainability Project website can help you:

• Measure and track your sustainability readiness over time
• Benchmark your performance to other news organisations
• Receive tailored recommendations
• Create project plans to improve your sustainability
• Explore research based on a study of 400+ news organisations

What is the Publisher Sustainability Diagnostic?

The Publisher Sustainability Diagnostic:

• Measures your news organisation’s sustainability readiness
• Shows industry benchmarks for key metrics
• Provides tailored recommendations
• Can help you build and track project plan

The diagnostic focuses on indicators we observed were important for sustainability across business models and geographies.

The Sustainability Readiness Scores assesses if you are:

• Building a differentiated product that meets your audiences’ information needs
• Engaging your audience deeply
• Monetizing your engagement effectively
• Creating foundations to operate effectively and evolve over time
• Financially stable and resilient

1. Click “Start Diagnostic”
2. Create a single account for your organisation.
3. Select one person from your organisation to manage your profile.
4. Answer the Eligibility questions to to inform your benchmarks and see if you qualify
5. Share the link to the questionnaire with your team members for their inputs. Questions are organised across four sections:
   • Product & Audience
   • Monetization
   • Fundamentals
   • Financial Performance

Your data will be validated by FT Strategies and hosted by Use All Five. Google does not have access to any of the raw data inputs you submit.

Your Sustainability Report is split into three sections:

How am I doing? (Scores & Benchmarks)

See your Sustainability Readiness Score, Sub-scores, and Key Performance Indicators, and how you compare. For each, we’ll show you benchmarks that allow you to compare your performance to similar publishers.

So what? (Key Insights)

We’ll summarise key insights for each dimension of the Sustainability Framework based on your responses.

What should I do? (Focus Areas, Tactics & Archetypes)

We’ll show you tailored focus areas, tactics and strategic choices. Add the tactics and strategic choices you’d like to focus on to your dashboard.

Your dashboard tracks all your activity on the website over time.

What can I do in my dashboard?

1. Track your Sustainability Readiness Score and performance against key benchmarks over time.
2. Add selected tactics to a Kanban Board to guide prioritisation.
3. For tactics you’ve selected, build project plans. Track your progress over time.
4. Refine your strategic choices.

In addition, we’ve created a number of studies based on the research we’ve conducted.

These include studies on:

1. Key Factors driving Sustainability
2. Archetypes - models of success - we’ve observed
3. Regional Deep Dives of Sustainability