— For Boards & Owners
The questions a board should ask about revenue.
Revenue systems diligence for the people responsible for a local media operation’s future: durability, margin, retention, forecastability, and a technology bill that funds the work instead of eating it.
What the board actually needs to know
Not whether the journalism is good. Whether the business underneath it can carry it. That comes down to a short list: how concentrated the revenue is, and what happens when the two largest accounts wobble. Whether retention is an operating system or a heroic effort. Whether leadership can forecast with confidence or is reading last quarter in the rearview. What the technology actually costs against what it does. And where AI is genuinely changing the math versus where it’s theater for the board packet.
What an engagement looks like
It starts the way all of this starts: the operation as it is, not as it looks in the packet. The diagnostic is the diligence instrument: a scoped read on where revenue is created, lost, underpriced, over-serviced, or trapped in manual workflow, ending in the first serious move with the build, buy, or partner call attached, and the boundary in writing so the map never pretends to be bigger than it is.
The lane, stated plainly
The goal of this work is an operation strong enough to stay independent. If the question is whether a local media business can be rebuilt rather than wound down or stripped for parts, the answer starts with the revenue systems underneath it, and that’s a question I can help answer honestly. I’m not the right partner for cutting a newsroom to the bone for exit. The work here is rebuilding revenue so the operation can stand.
Bring the operation as it is, not as it looks in the board packet.