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If you are in a local or community-centered news organization and are working on projects that empower young people in your community or equip young talent for civic engagement, we encourage you to apply for a remaining spot at the API Local News Summit on Youth Trust and Civic Resilience.

We believe local news plays a critical role in cultivating local identity and civic engagement. But today’s youth need to be brought into a relationship with a local news institution just as they should be brought into and affirmed that they are active members of civic life today. That’s why we’ll convene our API Local News Summit on Youth Trust and Civic Resilience in March.

We asked five leaders with community engagement experience outside of news about the opportunities they see for local media to build trust or belonging, from using physical spaces like libraries and community gardens to digital platforms that support shared experiences.

As the American Press Institute marks 80 years, we’ll honor our legacy by continuing to respond to the evolving needs of news leaders. Our upcoming API Local News Summits will explore three critical places where democracy and sustainability intersect.

Every community has a commons — a park, a library, a garden — a shared space that only thrives when people care for it together. Our local information ecosystems are no different. At our recent Local News Summit, we asked the room: What does it mean to be gardeners, guards and stewards of the local information commons?

We know psychological safety might feel like a ‘nice to have,’ but what if the failure to create that safety is silently stalling your best ideas and alienating your next generation of leaders?

Generational tension has always existed, of course, but today it is amplified by several factors, both in our communities and our newsrooms. We asked five summit participants to share more about the ways they are engaging and serving multigenerational audiences.

These partnerships can help rebuild trust in local media by including more voices and perspectives, and they offer a foundation for repair, restoration and reinvention. They weave the community together, fostering multidirectional conversations, a shared sense of place and joint ownership over our civic future.

We should work to become trauma-informed news leaders — no matter where we sit in the shop — and be intentional to practice this when the stakes are lowest.

Leaning into local identity and history can move our journalism from ‘we provide facts alone’ to ‘we provide facts and serve other important community functions.’