Program

Beyond content: Building services people use & that sustain your news venture

A one-day service design sprint for Philadelphia journalism

February 11, 2026

When: Wednesday, March 18, 2026 

Where: In-person in Center City, Philadelphia 

Come together for an intimate, one-day working session for Philadelphia local news organizations and independent creators who share a simple goal: to be useful to their communities in tangible, practical ways.

Amid rapid change in journalism, we’re not interested in debating missions or theories of change, but focusing on designing a real experiment: a specific way to help people that can be tried quickly, measured, and improved while meeting organizational business needs at the same time.

In the morning, we’ll introduce tools that can guide organizations to develop one concrete service opportunity in your current work. In the afternoon, you will have a dedicated 60-minute one-on-one working session with the facilitators, plus time to workshop and compare notes with peers.

Together, we’ll create a plan that can be stress-tested to actually meet your audience needs, by clarifying who it is for, what useful means in practice, what constraints need to be designed around, and what it takes to achieve it.

Participation is free, but space is limited. Please submit your interest form by Feb. 27. Acceptances will be sent out by March 4. Please reach out to [email protected] with any questions.    

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What your newsroom will get out of this

• Strategic guidance for leading a service-oriented, self-sustaining business.
• Confidential advising on a problem or opportunity related to your organization’s audience or revenue strategy.
• Feedback and design support on how to challenge your problem or opportunity from peers in the news and media ecosystem.
• A personalized plan of action you can implement within 90 days of leaving the workshop to test and assess your audience problem or opportunity.

Requirements for participation

• Your organization is able to send a team member to participate in the day’s activities.
• You are coming with a clear intent to build something that is directly useful to a specific community, not primarily to refine brand positioning or abstract impact narratives.
• You are willing to share a real, current challenge or opportunity from your work, including constraints and uncertainties, and discuss it candidly in a small peer setting.
• You are prepared to choose one information service opportunity to focus on and commit to drafting a simple, testable experiment during the day.
• You will complete light pre-work if requested (brief context about your organization, the audience served, and what useful currently looks like), so the one-on-one time can really push strategy forward.
• You are open to learning from organizations with very different models and levels of maturity, and to offering constructive peer feedback.

About Live LENs 

At The Lenfest Institute for Journalism, we are committed to creating spaces where Philadelphia-area newsrooms can learn from leading experts, connect with peers, and share solutions. Live LENs is a quarterly workshop series designed to help strengthen local news organizations by offering practical advice on audience growth, revenue diversification, and operational efficiency. 

About the Service Desk 

The Service Desk is Gazzetta’s applied service design practice for civic media, led by Madison Karas and Patrick Boehler. 

Thanks to the support of The Lenfest Institute for Journalism, the Service Desk has worked with dozens of newsrooms and independent creators across four continents to identify concrete service and revenue opportunities, map the obstacles that prevent follow-through, and translate good intentions into specific, testable services audiences can actually use.