Welcome to our August Need to Know Special Edition series on partnering with non-news experts.
The challenges local news faces — news deserts, burnout, community trust and connection — don’t exist in a vacuum. They are influenced by and interlock with trends in communities and the country, such as economic and technological change, demographic and educational trends, and political polarization. And for each challenge, there is knowledge from other sectors that can help:
- Journalists can use research findings to shape stories, beats and how media outlets build relationships with communities.
- The questions raised in research can help news leaders ask new questions about how journalism is done.
- Outside experts’ perspectives can spur news leaders to rethink their approach to systemic challenges such as news avoidance, tracking impact or engaging with young people.
Bringing ideas from outside of journalism into the conversation about how journalism evolves organizationally and how it serves communities has become a mark of our programming at the American Press Institute. We bring non-news experts to our Local News Summits to provide new perspectives on the same challenges, inspiring news leaders with new frameworks, approaches and knowledge.
This month, we’re outlining three frameworks for how journalists can engage with non-news experts and researchers to help solve a problem, rethink a beat or collaborate on an experiment. This week, we’ll start with you thinking about how partnering with a non-news expert might help you.
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Collaborate with non-news experts
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Most newsrooms have one impact story. They tell it the same way to everyone, and then they're surprised when it lands with some audiences and dies in the room with others. The story wasn't wrong. It just never got translated.
News leaders who say they want their journalism to help people make decisions and thrive must help their community maintain a sustainable relationship with civic information, which is very different from a newsroom that aims to get people to consume more information.
To understand what’s working and what challenges newsrooms continue to face, API spoke to people from The Boston Globe, The Texas Tribune, the Minnesota Star Tribune and The Seattle Times about their strategies around subscriptions and membership.
