The American Press Institute, with support from The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, awarded $20,000 in grants to five news organizations to support projects that engage youth through news coverage, community listening or outreach.
This challenge fund is designed to strengthen ideas and experiments discussed at API’s Local News Summit on Youth Trust and Civic Resilience, which was held in March. This summit, one of three API is hosting this year, explored how local media can develop strategic partnerships and invest in youth as valued stakeholders for building civic leadership in communities.
During the two-day convening, more than 60 news leaders were encouraged to embed youth perspectives into everyday workflows, test ideas in short learning cycles and redefine strategies for success. Participating news organizations were invited to apply for up to $4,000 in challenge funds to take their ideas to their next iteration.
“The API-Knight Youth Engagement Fund continues the learning in practice through experimentation,” said Samantha Ragland, API’s senior vice president. “These organizations have never lacked the desire to engage young people, but they all lacked the capacity to experiment. This fund challenged them to test one platform, one tactic, one move that might better embed youth influence in their news operations. API is excited to not just help them bridge generational gaps. We’re excited to share the learnings from these projects with the wider local journalism community.”
During the three-month grant period from May to July 2026, the selected news organizations will use funds to augment existing local youth engagement efforts and implement feedback into their workflows.
Funding for these experiments is made possible by Knight Foundation.
CONGRATULATIONS TO THE 2026 API-KNIGHT YOUTH ENGAGEMENT FUND GRANTEES:
BridgeDetroit (Michigan) will expand its Youth Engagement Survey by recruiting a cohort of youth ambassadors and designing accessible, youth-friendly materials to promote the initiative.
The Kansas City Defender (Missouri) will launch the Defender Dispatch Challenge, a short-form video journalism contest open to Black high school students across the Kansas City metro area.
REVIVE Radio + Media (Pennsylvania) will bring Philadelphia students to the 2026 Roots Picnic music and culture festival as on-site citizen reporters and engagement leaders, producing real-time, youth-led coverage and strengthening community trust through authentic storytelling inside Roots Village.
Stet News (Florida) will work with students in its Community Voices civic journalism program to adapt their reporting for peer-friendly platforms, testing which formats and approaches can help build trust or engagement among youth audiences in Riviera Beach.
ThreeSixty Journalism (Minnesota) will co-create an updated program evaluation framework with youth, alumni and industry partners to define and measure how young people and their broader communities benefit from youth involvement in journalism: as learners, creators and innovators.
If you are interested in partnering or financially supporting API Local News Challenge Funds, please email Kevin Loker at funding@pressinstitute.org.
ABOUT THE AMERICAN PRESS INSTITUTE
The American Press Institute supports local and community-based media through research, programs and products that foster healthy, responsive and resilient news organizations. API envisions an inclusive democracy and society, where communities have the news and information they need to thrive. API is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit educational organization, and its parent organization is the News/Media Alliance.
ABOUT KNIGHT FOUNDATION
We are social investors who support a more effective democracy by funding free expression and journalism, arts and culture in community, research in areas of media and democracy, and the success of American cities and towns where the Knight brothers once published newspapers.
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