Tucson Spotlight has won the 2026 LION Sustainability Award for Collaboration of the Year in the Micro/Small Revenue Tier.

Local Independent Online News Publishers, is a national nonprofit that supports independent local news outlets across the country. The organization’s annual Sustainability Awards recognize outlets for strengthening their journalistic impact, financial health or operational resilience, rather than for individual stories.

Winners were announced Wednesday at LION’s Independent News Sustainability Summit in San Diego.

This year’s awards drew 232 submissions across 10 categories. Forty-five member organizations were named finalists, with 17 winners selected by a panel of volunteer judges.

The partnerships behind the award spanned the region in 2025. In South Tucson, a 5,600-resident, majority-Hispanic community with limited internet access, Tucson Spotlight produced a print newsletter under a formal city partnership.

On the Tohono O’odham Nation, where broadband is scarce, a grant funded a printed community newsletter, while O’odham Media, an Indigenous storytelling platform founded by Spotlight board member Trinity Norris, found a home on the newsroom’s website.

Tucson Spotlight also built the region’s largest paid pipeline for early-career journalists, providing paid opportunities for 50 students and recent college graduates since 2024. Many of them first-generation college students, women and people of color, interns and freelances pitched and reported stories that often ran nowhere else in local media. And through its Spanish-language vertical,

“We’ve always believed that sustainable community journalism is built on relationships, and this award proves that collaboration is how small newsrooms reach the people who need local news most,” said Tucson Spotlight co-founder Caitlin Schmidt.

This is the second consecutive year Tucson Spotlight has been a LION Sustainability Awards finalist. Last year, the newsroom was a finalist for New LION Business of the Year.

Tucson Spotlight is a community-based newsroom that provides paid opportunities for students and rising journalists in Southern Arizona. Please consider supporting our work with a tax-deductible donation.