Want to start your own local online news outlet? With a new staff and a $1 million grant, LION Publishers wants to do more to help » Nieman Journalism Lab

After leaving her job as the managing editor of a newspaper owned by Digital First Media “due to differences with this company’s management” last year, Kara Meyberg Guzman wasn’t sure what to do next. After a few conversations with a former colleague at the Santa Cruz Sentinel, they decided to launch a local news podcast and were trying to figure out…how exactly to actually do that.

Then she found the Local Independent Online Publishers (LION) YouTube channel of LION Publishers — LION short for local, independent, and online.

“Around December of last year, I stumbled on their YouTube channel, and the first one was Lance Knobel from Berkeleyside and I was floored,” Meyberg Guzman said. “You can do a [direct public offiering] and raise a million dollars? That’s amazing! I binge watched all of the videos from last year’s conference.”

[ With a direct public offering, Berkeleyside wants to turn its readers into its newest owners ]

Knobel and Meyberg Guzman…