Special Edition

By connecting generations and harnessing history to tell the story of Baca County, the Plainsman Herald has found new revenue sources, partnerships with community and historical organizations and a path forward to serving its community.

We’ve seen early wins: Our next-gen audience (ages 18–44) grew from 3,900 to 32,500 – a 733% growth in six months. If a small BIPOC-led newsroom like ours can reimagine itself as a dynamic cross-generational platform, others can too.

Reaching younger audiences has long been a challenge for media organizations. As platforms evolve, trust in news shifts and news avoidance grows, it can feel especially difficult to connect with and serve multigenerational audiences in an authentic and sustainable way. How can news leaders do their part to represent and include community perspectives from members of different age groups?

An event that celebrates your community can coalesce those identities — and establish local media as the conveners, recordkeepers and storytellers of your community yesterday and today.

In Southern California, the Coachella Valley Journalism Foundation is pioneering collaborations with local historical societies to help support the journalists of today — while working to ensure that the stories of yesteryear are preserved and rediscovered.

Diving into local history can be a great way to reach new audiences and cultivate a sense of place, but some communities already have a strong identity that can be tapped into as well. That’s exactly what Block Club Chicago has built its merchandising strategy around

Welcome to July’s Special Edition, where we feature essays from four attendees of the API Local News Summit on Local Identity, History and Sustainability on [...]

With a relevant topic, rich storytelling material and a timely hook in hand, you now have the raw ingredients to develop historical programming that resonates.

As journalists, we spend so much time looking forward — to the next deadline or the next story — that we sometimes forget to look at the people working side-by-side with us. So, how do we build an authentic sense of belonging?

Vicky Ho, newly appointed editor of the Anchorage Daily News, uses project management frameworks to gather stakeholders from across the organization to participate in focused, short-term projects in an efficient and collaborative manner.