Last May, a pair of endangered piping plovers laid eggs on Chicago’s Montrose Beach. As cinema stars and mascots for local conservationists, the two birds – dubbed Monty and Rose – had already built up quite a fan base among Chicagoans. The nonprofit news outlet Block Club Chicago drew so many readers with its coverage […]

In recent years, the number of nonprofits and initiatives that could be categorized under a concept called “bridging” has expanded in the U.S.: Millions of Conversations, The People’s Supper and Good Conflict are just a few. Some efforts build on conflict resolution practices at a large scale (think social psychology) or individual (think marriage counseling), […]

Good journalists strive to uncover and share truth with others. That’s what attracts many people to the field or to supporting it, including myself. It’s also why in recent years I have become interested in the study of “perception gaps,” or deeply distorted understandings people have of each other. I saw polls, like one from […]

Asking audiences to make a donation to support journalism may not have been something many local news organizations — apart from public media newsrooms, that is — had experience (or comfort) doing. The coronavirus pandemic helped change that. Thrown into severe financial distress at the onset of the pandemic, some news organizations started asking for […]

On September 28, API hosted an online discussion on tactics for retaining subscribers. Many publishers are recognizing the critical need to invest more in subscriber retention — “Retention is the new acquisition,” says Gwen Vargo, API’s director of reader revenue. However, subscriber churn is a problem that has plagued the newspaper industry for years. API is […]

Editor’s Note: Over the last year or two there has been an increased interest from newsrooms — both corporate-owned and independent — in forming editorial or advisory boards made up of local residents. The boards provide a direct link from the newsrooms to their communities, making their journalism more relevant and inclusive. API recently covered […]

The lone editor at a small newsroom owned by a large corporation was overwhelmed, once again. A few big stories had consumed his entire staff of nine reporters — most of whom were newly hired and inexperienced. As he tried furiously to edit, coach and organize, he also was fielding phone calls, emails and Slack […]

This is the fourth installment of a column from API Executive Director Tom Rosenstiel about the press and politics, culture and media ethics, technology and the search for sustainability for news. It is published in partnership with the Poynter Institute. Read the previous column here. The numbers are hard for some to fathom. More than six in […]

One of the biggest challenges we’ve heard from the newsrooms we work with is that there’s not enough time. Journalism has always been a high-stress job, but it’s become increasingly so as budgets have tightened across the industry and newsrooms have tried to keep up the pace and volume of work with fewer resources. But […]

When I think about the word “conflict,” it’s hard not to think of journalism. I learn about most conflicts in the world and many even in our own country through news coverage of them. But with the speed and aggression at which information barrels at us today, it’s sometimes hard to stop and think about […]