People with deep ties to their community often find ways to improve it. They lead movements, run for office, teach or start a business. Some do it by contributing to local news and information, which is a powerful and sometimes underutilized means of shaping civic life.
At API, we believe local journalism must serve as an inclusive civic on-ramp — a shared gateway for belonging and resilience, beyond clicks and revenue.
But how many local residents feel that way? How many know this is an option? At a time when institutional trust and civic participation are both declining, many residents feel disconnected from their neighbors and from the journalists who serve them. It’s no wonder few know that contributing to local journalism is an option, let alone a path for civic renewal.
And yet, across the country, news organizations are finding ways to collaborate with their communities. Many are moving from a solely news-based operation toward a collaborative model where the local information landscape is shaped with, not just for, the community.
Local journalism is more robust when this happens — stories are more complete, communities are represented more fully. But it also actively fosters engagement, solidarity and empowerment by strengthening social networks (both on and offline). True news and community collaborations can create a sense of purpose or belonging, especially among marginalized groups, when local journalists can reach and connect with them authentically.
Residents experience this firsthand when local media:
- Collaborate with trusted messengers to engage young news consumers, like the Houston Chronicle did, or enhance election participation, like THE CITY tested.
- Inform news judgment and story selection through organization-specific advisory groups, like the one Oaklandside worked with, and ecosystem-level advisories, exemplified by API’s pilot in Pittsburgh.
- Document public meetings with the public’s help through citizen-oriented programs like Documenters and Spotlight Delaware.
- Teach community members reporting skills through initiatives such as the Earn Your Press Pass initiative, started in rural Kansas.
- Cultivate skills across ages through specifically high school programs like Boyle Heights Beat and age-diverse community college initiatives such as Journalism + Design.
- Facilitate interactive workshops, including letter-writing support at Concord Monitor and podcasting sessions such as with NextGen Radio.
- Launch ambassador programs like El Timpano’s and The 51st
- Sustain internship programs to support diverse perspectives and career exploration like the Voces Internship of Idaho
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. Instead of a one- or two-way conversation, an inclusive local media fosters multidirectional conversations, a shared sense of place and joint ownership over our civic future.
In today’s world, we all need to feel local belonging — or as advocates for civic life and social connection Pete Davis and Sam Pressler put it, a civic membership.
This ownership positively impacts a community’s resilience because residents move from the sidelines into roles of shared agency — no longer passive recipients of policy, but co-creators of the places they live.
This shift reflects the values of a pluralistic democracy: shared stakes and power, humility in leadership and a belief that solutions are stronger when shaped by many voices. The journalism examples above reflect this shift, and of course, there is much to learn from spaces of community empowerment outside of journalism — whether through libraries, oral history collaboratives, skills-teaching community programs and participatory public art.
API has seen through its work that meaningful and inclusive engagement, and specifically co-ownership between the news and the community, can foster a sense of control and shared responsibility. We believe this can translate into longer-term local infrastructure, a greater sense of connection and more organizational capacity across industries for meeting the information needs of our neighbors.
That’s why our October API Local News Summit will focus on Inclusion, Belonging and Local Leadership. News leaders have an opportunity to identify and create more on-ramps for community members to become journalists or contribute to local civic health in other ways. The potential to address the decline of local journalists in the U.S. may exist right in our neighborhoods. We’ve seen this especially in rural communities, where in some cases, volunteers are stepping into roles once filled by professional journalists — not for credit, but out of care for where they live.
The summit will cap our API Local News Summit series for 2025, which has focused on creating a sense of place. Across the series, we’ve explored how journalism that is rooted in place, connects generations and invites participation doesn’t just rebuild trust; it builds community resilience.
We began by discussing how, in response to their community’s news fatigue, local media can differentiate themselves and add value by embracing their local identity and history in innovative ways. We then explored how connecting across generations within one’s community and within one’s own organization helps address local needs, rather than merely reporting to chase audience metrics. We are now eager to convene on the possibilities and untapped potential of creating replicable pathways into journalism that empower people who already care about their communities.
Community engagement like this by news organizations isn’t just about trust, or resources, or the sharing of skills or knowledge. It ties neighbors, including journalists, together. It can help activate the collaboration and connection our communities need and deserve.
If you are interested in finding ways for your news organization to collaborate and connect with community members to strengthen civic health, please contact us to learn how we might help or sign up to get updates about summits. And if you are interested in partnering or financially supporting such efforts to help local news contribute to the well-being of their communities in this way, please email Kevin Loker at funding@pressinstitute.org.
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