News Blog

After breaking bread together a few times, “the media” grew a face and some humanity, and “the community” became more complex and interesting. Real relationships started to emerge.

Resident participants must have a way to inform and impact reporting practices — material proof of impact — not just offer story ideas.

The experience helped foster candid conversation without demonizing the media. With the commitment and intentionality of our community liaison, the local news advisory project also worked to amplify the voices of residents who are often afraid to speak up.

Ultimately, for the inaugural advisory committee, I believe the newsrooms benefited more than the community. I am hopeful that the media will access community members and information we shared as resources to cover stories that reflect the conversations from the advisory committee. 

What I didn’t know, but would quickly learn, is how uncomfortable and personal the discussions could get and, despite it all, how dedicated the committee was to making the process work.

After a six-month pilot of an ecosystem-wide local news advisory committee, we’re sharing a multi-part perspective series on this effort: an outgrowth of our deep, three-year commitment to the Pittsburgh media ecosystem, which included two learning cohorts, a dozen community listening sessions and now this committee.

Through its 2025 Revenue Experiments Learning Cohort, API will support the eight local and community news organizations — all alumni of the U.S.-based Table Stakes Local News Transformation Program — with peer-learning calls to help them clarify their experiments, share ideas, and define effective tactics and strategies.

The selected organizations are U.S. local and community-based media organizations that are alumni of the U.S.-based Table Stakes program and participated in the API Local News Summit for Belonging and Collaboration in July 2024.

Live events are an attractive platform for many local news organizations — they build brand awareness and trust, bring the community together and, of course, can be a source of revenue.

Examples of how newsrooms have spun up live events, products and third spaces to experiment with new sources of revenue while fostering community belonging.