Report

Although we caution against relying solely on financial conversion metrics to measure the success of partnering with a creator, setting a secondary goal can be beneficial — especially when you’ve defined, or redefined, conversion for a creator-newsroom collaboration.

As research continues to inform this slice of the news industry, we’ll continue learning, too. Who gets to be called a journalist in 2025 and beyond? What is the future of trustworthy information, especially considering the access to and trust for online content creators? How might journalism adapt to the rise, or co-opt the styles, of news influencers?

API's 2025 Influencers Learning Cohort helped local news organizations deepen engagement with the communities they serve through new experiments with creators and trusted messengers. You can read more about their work, in their own words, in the following case studies on API’s BetterNews.org.

We’ll look at how newsrooms and their creator partners can use engagement tools on Instagram, TikTok and YouTube to deepen audience connection. Each of these platforms offers its own features that, when used intentionally, can help build trust.

Our hope is that this guide can demystify and derisk influencer collaborations for newsrooms and get more of you on a path to responsible experimentation.

We worked with a small team of lawyers to draft a contract for these new working relationships. The template includes highlighted sections that we suggest you edit to meet your needs and reflect your collaborations with trusted messengers.

After four months of learning and experiments, our American Press Institute and Knight Election Hub cohort on influencer collaborations has concluded. Here's what we learned.

Questions, flags and a checklist to help you anticipate and prepare for any potentially sticky ethical situations that arise in partnering with trusted messengers, including language for how to get on the record about the ethics guiding your collaboration.

The Table Stakes Local News Transformation Programs ran from 2015 to 2024. More than 200 local news organizations from across the United States benefited from these programs.

As we look ahead to the next five to 10 years, the American Press Institute team brainstormed future non-negotiables that we believe local news organizations must consider to ensure their longevity and resilience.