Six news organizations will experiment with local influencers or trusted messengers to share their nonpartisan local journalism on elections in 2024 as part of a new American Press Institute program for the Knight Election Hub.
The API team will facilitate peer-learning calls as part of this “Election + Influencers Learning Cohort,” an opportunity for news leaders to explore ideas, concerns and processes for effective partnerships with influencers, defined as a trusted community messenger with a platform on or off social media.
News organizations will receive grants to experiment with influencer collaborations and storytelling that prioritize giving their communities the information they need to make informed voting decisions and have confidence in the election process and results. The cohort is considering collaborations with micro-influencers, regional influencers such as college football coaches or professional athletes, and national influencers in health and wellness. They will finalize project plans by Oct. 1.
Insights from the program and the projects will lead to resources and programming that API will share broadly later this year and into 2025.
The six participating news organizations represent a range of media types, geographies and communities:
- Public Source (Pennsylvania)
- Atlanta Journal-Constitution (Georgia)
- THE CITY (New York)
- WSOC-TV (North Carolina)
- Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service (Wisconsin)
- Factchequeado (nationwide)
“These urgent and necessary collaborations can help connect journalists with communities and conversations where they are outsiders,” said Samantha Ragland, API’s VP of Journalism Programs. “Together, we believe reporters and influencers can become ‘trusted community messengers’ for one another, increasing access to information and resources, experiences and relationships.
Communities need connection to one another and across differences to thrive. And our goal with this cohort is to teach and learn how joint responsibility over these community connections can encourage civic discourse and engagement.”
The program is a collaboration that expands the work of the Knight Election Hub, a collection of curated products and services to help news outlets cover the election.
“Two important goals of the Knight Election Hub are to help local communities make informed choices about voting, and to use high-quality information to understand and have confidence in the voting process,” said Scott Klein, entrepreneur-in-residence at Automattic and leader of the Knight Election Hub project. “This project gives six amazing newsrooms a chance to extend their work into the spaces online where their communities are turning for that information.”
The projects will begin immediately and run through the end of 2024, including efforts both before and after the election.
API has a range of resources for covering the 2024 elections. This includes other grants to augment community engagement around election coverage. One of API’s main areas of focus is Civic Discourse & Democracy to ensure all people have the information they need to make decisions and help their communities thrive, including and beyond elections.
The Knight Election Hub, made possible by an investment from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, provides resources and services to U.S. newsrooms covering the 2024 elections. These resources, which include training, data, software and even polling, help publishers serve their audiences by giving them the information they need to make informed voting decisions, have confidence in the election process and results, and understand the role newsrooms play in providing reliable civic information.
Knight Foundation is also working with the American Bar Association to host the Knight Election Law Forums, a virtual series aimed at equipping journalists with essential, nonpartisan, fact-based knowledge on election law to better inform their communities in the lead-up to the 2024 elections and beyond.
For more information about this program or Civic Discourse & Democracy programming in 2025, please contact Kevin Loker, senior director of program operations and partnerships, at kevin.loker@pressinstitute.org.
ABOUT THE AMERICAN PRESS INSTITUTE
The American Press Institute supports local and community-based media through research, programs and products that foster healthy, responsive and resilient news organizations. API envisions an inclusive democracy and society, where communities have the news and information they need to make decisions and thrive. API is a national 501(c)(3) nonprofit educational organization affiliated with the News/Media Alliance.
