Shawn Singh started the Instagram account @ShawnTheFoodSheep while working on his master’s degree with the goal of posting every day for an entire year. Today he’s amassed 234,000 followers on...

Washington withdrawal For local or regional news organizations, having a Washington bureau isn’t a vanity play. It allows reporters to monitor what their congressional delegations are doing, how much...

Welcome to the Need to Know: Training Edition! Your monthly curated list of professional development resources for journalists and news leaders. Do you have ideas for opportunities to include? Send...

When editors engage When an editor communicates with audiences directly, the public can get a sense of the newsroom’s priorities, how day-to-day decisions are made and generally how the news works....

FINDING THE RIGHT INFLUENCER Because we had already seen some success in the food creator space, we knew that we wanted to experiment with food content. Food is also a topic that generally performs...

Welcome to our November Need to Know series on influencer partnerships and how one local newsroom approached it from an experimental framework as a way to test whether it could become a permanent...

Intimidation backlash Amid what seems like an epidemic lately of reporters getting bullied, it’s worth looking at how this treatment often plays out: It backfires. Vanity Fair’s Eric Lutz documented...

Three examples of creator partnerships that led to conversion wins for local news organizations. Leidy Celeste (from left) in a TikTok on Dodge City, Kan., for Planeta Venus; Shawn Singh takes...

Every community has a commons — a park, a library, a garden — a shared space that only thrives when people care for it together. Our local information ecosystems are no different. They, too, depend...

Building beyond the building The real estate publication CoStar this week published a story about the uncertain fate of landmark news buildings in light of disruption in the industry. The piece by...

Work with local schools to help students develop journalistic skills.

Students stand up for each other Lately we’ve been seeing more examples of how student journalists are filling the gaps in news deserts or hyperlocal pockets that big newsrooms overlook. This week,...

Have you ever done a “Fail Fest”? That’s how we started our API Local News Summit on Civic Discourse Across Generations. We had gathered impressive news leaders of different ages and from across the...

Welcome Robyn Tomlin! Veteran journalist Robyn Tomlin has been named the American Press Institute’s next executive director, effective Dec. 1.   Tomlin has spent more than three decades in journalism...

Veteran journalist Robyn Tomlin has been named the American Press Institute’s next executive director. Tomlin, who will start Dec. 1, will lead API’s work to accelerate innovation, sustainability and...

The American Press Institute has been helping local newsrooms partner with trusted messengers and influencers. This update to our influencer guide highlights lessons from our second learning cohort...

In Part 1, I talked about escaping the “service trap” by shifting from a story mindset to a product mindset. Now let’s get practical. Here are three simple principles any newsroom, of any size, can...

Helping audiences find their happy place At API, we’re always on the lookout for projects that energize audiences and serve as antidotes to news fatigue. Here’s one that caught our eye recently: The...

AI food for thought The past week has brought a burst of new insights on how newsrooms are using and can use AI. They focus on some key questions for news leaders considering the role of AI in their...

Six news organizations from across the U.S. will participate in the intensive change-management training program facilitated by API.