Editor’s Note: API is pleased to announce that next week, along with the regular Need to Know editions on Monday, Wednesday and Friday, you will receive a special new offering on Thursday, May 1 — the debut of the Need to Know: Training Edition.
This new installment is an expansion of our Need to Know newsletter, designed to highlight training opportunities from across the industry. Delivered on the first Thursday of every month, it will serve as a valuable resource for discovering professional development to support your continued growth.
If you have a training event or professional development opportunity you’d like to see in a future edition, please share it through our submission form. Thank you for being a part of the API community — we’re excited to bring you this new resource.
Tips and tools for the immigration beat
Covering immigration and immigrant communities these days involves telling stories of fear, as the Portland Oregonian did this week. It involves detailing the tactics of ICE, like the Charlottesville Daily Progress did with a courthouse raid that has sparked outrage. And then there is documenting the inexplicable, like a New York Times piece on a man in Detroit who disappeared altogether.
Because none of this is easy, the journalism support world is offering resources to help.
This week the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press published a legal guide for journalists with detailed information on accessing records about immigration proceedings and enforcement actions. It is available in English and Spanish.
For a better understanding of statistics, Journalist’s Resource has an explainer from Syracuse professor Austin Kocher on how to read arrest and detention numbers.
The Center for Journalism Ethics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison recently explored how to responsibly report on immigration without heightening community tensions.
Finally, one resource to note from API: A year ago, we published an article on moral injury in journalism. The work of the preeminent researcher in this field, University of Toronto psychiatrist Anthony Feinstein, stemmed from his study of journalists covering migrant communities. Today it’s more relevant than ever.
News In Focus
Headlines, resources and events aligned with API’s four areas of focus.
Civic Discourse & Democracy
>> How we’re battling Trump’s science cuts across small-town America (Nature)
At a time when funding for scientific research is being drastically cut, neuroscientist Jessica Cantlon, who researches the mathematical-processing capabilities of human children and other young primates at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, is running a project for researchers across the country to get in touch with local newspapers to argue for science funding and why it is important to their communities. The idea behind Science Homecoming is that scientists get in touch with the local newspaper where they grew up.
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Culture & Inclusion
>> Guidance for journalists looking to beat their fear of public speaking (International Journalists’ Network)
Public speaking is a critical part of many journalists’ jobs. But a lot of people fear it, writes Beryn Orera. She has come up with eight strategies for journalists to get past public speaking jitters. Among them: Practice speaking extemporaneously, rather than using a script. One expert told Orera that it’s important for people to remember that “the audience is there to gain valuable insights from you, not to judge you.”
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Community Engagement & Trust
>> New from API: News leaders: Embrace local identity and history to create added value
People often have an endless reservoir of love and care for the places they live and the neighborhoods they call home. As a result, newsrooms that lean into local identity can add value by helping people make informed decisions, building connections between the past and present, enriching conversations through complexity or nuance, and bridging individual differences. This is one takeaway from our local news summit in Nashville earlier this month on how local news organizations can build on their communities’ history and assets.
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Revenue & Resilience
>> Join us: Proven digital transformation strategies to try at your news organization
We’re hosting an hour-long discussion and interactive debrief at 1 p.m. ET May 1 on the tools and frameworks newsrooms can use in digital transformation. In this conversation, attendees will hear from local news leaders who worked on successful digital transformation strategies to launch new products, increase revenue streams, hold live journalism events and strengthen workplace culture at their organizations. Learn more and sign up.
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What else you need to know
🎤 ‘Do you consider yourself a journalist?’ CNN meets MAGA media at White House
📝 Former VOA reporter Liam Scott has started a Substack newsletter on press freedom (The Press Freedom Report)
⚖️ Q&A: Bill Grueskin on The New York Times beating Sarah Palin (again) (CJR)
✂️ Colorado Springs Indy lays off staff and transfers ownership amid shock statement (Inside the News in Colorado)
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Weekend reads
+ Columbia Journalism Review faces the kind of crisis it usually covers (The New York Times)
+ On ‘secret’ radio stations nationwide, a decades-old news service has survived the move to digital (Nieman Lab)
+ How Donald Trump revealed Jeff Bezos’ true self (Politico)
+ Podcast: Warwick Sabin, CEO of Deep South Today, on journalism, civic leadership & broadband in the South (The Fiber Podcast)
