Illustration by Sylvia Asuncion-Crabb
The local news industry has been in turmoil for years. You’re probably aware that the number of local newspapers in the U.S. is shrinking, from 8,891 in 2005 to 5,591 in 2024, with 208 U.S. counties lacking any news outlets. You or someone you know has likely been among the 9,508 local and national news professionals laid off since 2021. Fighting disinformation and trying to earn back the trust of your community is your day-to-day reality.
Despite the challenges, there are success stories across the media landscape. There are newspapers that have more than doubled their number of digital subscribers in two years. There are broadcast TV stations that have revamped their coverage plans, including developing audience-focused mission statements to guide their work, resulting in new coverage topics and newsletter subscribers. And there are organizations that have owned up to the harm they’ve caused their communities and begun the process of reconciliation and rebuilding trust, listening to audiences of color and creating journalism for them, growing their audiences and creating new products to serve these communities.
These accomplishments didn’t come quickly or easily. News organizations overhauled their workflows and learned new skills. They shifted their thinking to be wholly focused on audiences. They tried and sometimes failed when experimenting with new platforms and coverage formats, embracing the humility and welcoming the resilience that comes along with that.
And crucially, they agreed to share their tactics and frameworks with you so that you can apply them in your own organization. This guide features strategies tested and proven by local news organizations that participated in the Table Stakes Local News Transformation Program along the themes of product thinking, revenue, engaged journalism, collaboration and managing change.
These are strategies we believe are key for digital transformation and sustaining and growing local news.
Part of the Table Stakes program’s ethos has been an openness to sharing what worked and what didn’t — so that others who don’t have the privilege to participate in an intensive, yearlong digital transformation program can also benefit from its lessons. Since 2017, the American Press Institute has published case studies from Table Stakes organizations on BetterNews.org, which will continue as a resource for practical information that news organizations can use to improve their businesses.
This guide is created in that spirit, with the added goal of making these approaches immediately applicable to you. It curates strategies that news leaders can truly own and contextualizes them within the industry, provides bite-sized versions of case studies, and features worksheets and checklists that allow you to apply the strategies in your organization today.
More about the Table Stakes Local News Transformation Program
From 2015 to 2024, more than 200 local news organizations participated in the yearlong Table Stakes Local News Transformation Program and its subsequent shorter-term “sprint” programs, housed at the American Press Institute, Arizona State University’s Walter Cronkite School of Journalism, University of North Carolina’s Center for Innovation and Sustainability in Local Media and the Poynter Institute. These programs were funded by The Knight-Lenfest Local News Transformation Fund and the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation.
In the yearlong change management program, news organizations learned the table stakes, key digital skills needed for news publishers to thrive in the digital era, and the tools of Performance Driven Change. Both the table stakes and the Performance Driven Change tools were developed by Douglas K. Smith, who is also the founder of the Media Transformation Challenge program built around this intellectual property. More than 60 coaches helped guide teams through the programs.
These Table Stakes news organizations ranged from legacy newspapers with newsroom staffs of more than 200 to new start-ups with staffs of just one or two. The group includes broadcast television stations, public media, newspapers and digital-only organizations. Various business models are also represented — nonprofits, family-owned single-site organizations and members of large, publicly-traded chains.
About this guide
From these organizations’ work in the Table Stakes programs, we identified five categories of proven and tested strategies that can accelerate digital transformation in local news:
- Adopting a product-thinking mindset
- Diversifying revenue
- Practicing engaged journalism
- Collaborating internally and externally
- Managing people through change
These strategies are crucial no matter where your organization is in its transformation efforts, and they deepen in sophistication the further along you are in your journey.
Each section of this guide includes:
- A short introduction to the topic
- Subsets of strategies and tactics with examples from Table Stakes organizations
- A “try this” section with resources that allow you to apply these techniques in your organizations immediately
Are you a Table Stakes alumnus with a success story to share, or do you know of a resource we should include? Please fill out this form.
Share with your network
- The Digital Transformation Guide from the American Press Institute
- Adopting a product-thinking mindset
- Diversifying revenue
- Practicing engaged journalism
- Collaborating internally and externally
- Managing people through change
- What’s next
- Acknowledgments
You also might be interested in:
Examples of how newsrooms have spun up live events, products and third spaces to experiment with new sources of revenue while fostering community belonging.
The American Press Institute has begun publishing takeaways from a new program to help local media collaborate with trusted messengers and influencers. In the coming weeks, we’ll share [...]
The press will be much more effective in serving people and strengthening democracy if it learns from what researchers are learning. Among the examples and takeaways, you will find that news leaders and non-news experts alike value the opportunity to think differently about the challenges in front of them, about how local news can change and how research can ask different questions.
