Have you ever done a “Fail Fest”?

That’s how we started our API Local News Summit on Civic Discourse Across Generations. We had gathered impressive news leaders of different ages and from across the country to talk about how local news can be a force for intergenerational connection and problem-solving in local communities.

We began by handing over the mic to a few summiters, who candidly admitted a cross-generational failure to the room of strangers. But they didn’t stop there. Each leader shared what they learned and how they pivoted as a result of this failure.

Too often, we move too quickly past a failure instead of interrogating and considering it, which enables our own learning and self-awareness. It also refills our resilience.

Our goal was to model talking about challenges — and feeling safe and secure enough to do so — which is an important skill for news leaders today. It’s especially important as we navigate intergenerational workplaces, where people of different ages need to be able to ask each other for their perspectives without fear of misunderstanding.

At the American Press Institute, we define psychological safety as the belief that you won’t be punished or humiliated for speaking up with your ideas, questions, concerns or mistakes — that your team (or community group) is safe for interpersonal risk-taking. This definition, from Harvard researcher Amy Edmondson, is foundational to how we think about trust, learning and growth in the workplace.

When psychological safety exists, people can move past assumptions about one another based on the generation they belong to. They can be open to learning from one another — older colleagues sharing the wisdom they’ve acquired over the years, and younger ones questioning ingrained habits. It’s not using deadline pressure or rank-pulling to avoid conversations that expose one another to different perspectives; it’s creating space where those conversations can happen with honesty and curiosity.

It was also the focus of the main workshop we held. Below is a brief overview of what we shared there, the topic of which resonated deeply in our post-summit surveys:

  • Testing and modeling the different kinds of listening during the psychological safety session was both uncomfortable and revealing. Excited to bring back that practice to my interactions within our newsroom. –Summit participant
  • The workshop on creating a space for psychological safety resonated with me deeply. It helped me to better understand how a safe space can lead to more meaningful dialogue. This approach can result in better outcomes for communities. –Summit participant

We know psychological safety might feel like a ‘nice to have’ — something that gets buried under the weight of breaking news, shrinking budgets and urgent decisions. But what if the failure to create that safety is silently stalling your best ideas and alienating your next generation of leaders?

We’re sharing these summit insights with you in the hope they spark reflection in your newsroom, your partnerships and your approach to community engagement, especially across ages.

From psychological safety to action

A psychologically safe workplace is okay with you giving 50% when that’s all you’ve got to give that day. It gives you the ability to fail, or to challenge authority. These are critical components of healthy intergenerational connection and conversation, too.

As we moved through the summit, one thing became clear: many failed initiatives — the ones that never launched, stalled out or quietly died — may be traced to a sense of psychological threat.

This is true inside our newsrooms and in the communities we serve.

As news organizations across the country aim to increase their perceived value to younger news consumers, they can’t stop at reporting the news, launching the product or hosting the listening session.

Psychological safety is essential for building trust, encouraging open dialogue and repairing past harms. It isn’t a warm-and-fuzzy add-on. It’s the soil intergenerational trust is grown in — and it starts with how we lead, listen and learn.

🛠 Try this: In your next all-staff or team meeting, create space for a “mini Fail Fest.” Ask: “What’s one cross-generational moment that didn’t go as planned — and what did we learn?”

Heroes may have more fans, but hosts have more help

Healthy, intergenerational spaces don’t need heroes. They need more hosts.

If you’ve ever:

  • Felt like the future of journalism sits on your shoulders
  • Sat through a meeting where decisions were made before the conversation started
  • Seen a colleague’s ideas dismissed until a senior leader repeated them

Then you have experienced the downside of “hero leadership.”

“You’re acting like a hero when you believe that if you just work harder, you’ll fix things… when you take on more and more projects and causes and have less time for relationships,” Margaret Wheatley and Debbie Frieze wrote in their 2010 essay, Leadership in the Age of Complexity.

But there can’t be heroes in this work.

When it comes to transforming our news operations and journalism — pivoting out of survival and into a state of flourishing — we have to show up as hosts. We have to stand up and get to work, together.

Host leaders embrace complexity. They:

  • Listen differently
  • Invite perspective
  • Observe social needs
  • Respond to social threats

Effective, impactful intergenerational collaborations don’t happen when we wear capes.

We’re talking about root-level investment, and yes, it exists in tension with the news cycle and business models we know so well. But it is a necessary investment in the people we report and storytell for, because these people are looking for someone who will see them, hear them and invite them in.

💭 Quick check-in: Are you making space for others to lead? Ask yourself this week: “Where can I step back and become a host instead of a fixer?”

A new kind of listening bridging generational divides

What happens if we stop listening like a journalist?

It may feel strange at first. But we believe listening differently is a requirement to bridging generational differences and challenging assumptions. Specifically, we at API like to challenge news leaders to either listen to create momentum or to build meaning.

When you listen like a trampoline, you convey to the speaker that you are invested in their ideas and can see possibilities. You put a premium on presence and progress, not perfection. Those random Slack pings, one-off DMs, or community dinners are ideal spaces to try it.

🔄 Micro-practice: The next time someone shares an idea, respond like a trampoline — bounce their idea back with curiosity: “Tell me more. What would it look like if we tried it?”

There will be times, especially as you learn to share power as a host leader, that your listening should be less about you and more about the meaning-making happening for your speaker as they share without your prompting, nodding or actively engaging.

This constructivist listening is an equity practice that enables a story-sharer to speak in drafts, to meander and arrive at a conclusion or solution as they connect their own dots. It enables discovery, healing and trust-building, especially in public-facing conversations with residents.

🔄 Micro-practice: Set up a one-way listening booth this month for your community. Invite them to speak in drafts for 2-3 minutes with the understanding that no direct response will follow, only a summary of themes later.

Social threat is real — and it slows collaboration

Between leading well and listening differently, there’s another behavior that matters: designing for safety.

When people experience a social threat, they are unable to absorb information or collaborate effectively. This is especially true in generationally diverse groups.

Many failed initiatives — the ones that never launched, stalled out or quietly died — may be traced to a sense of psychological threat.

We offered attendees the SCARF framework developed by neuroscientist David Rock, which identifies the five social needs that shape how safe we feel:

  1. Status: Do I feel respected?
  2. Certainty: Do I know what’s happening?
  3. Autonomy: Do I have a say?
  4. Relatedness: Do I belong here?
  5. Fairness: Is this being done equitably?

Read more about this framework and how to use it in your newsroom in the Need to know Special Edition Series: Leading Teams with Equity.

🧪 Field test: Before your next event, use the five social needs as a checklist. Where might someone feel unsure or excluded? Adjust one part of the experience accordingly.

This shift from content design to safety design enables journalists to become more effective conveners, facilitating dialogue and solutions that reach new depths.

Looking outward

Throughout the API Local News Summit on Civic Discourse Across Generations, news leaders shared how they’re facilitating conversation and creating intergenerational connection in their community, such as:

These stories aren’t just inspiring; they’re your call to action. Whether you’re a reporter, editor, engagement lead, product builder or community partner, here are a few more micro practices in psychological safety to try this week — because starting small is always better than never starting at all:

💬 Ask your team: “Where do we need more hosts than heroes?” Open a 10-minute conversation. You might be surprised by what surfaces.

📌 Name a bias you’re unlearning: In a 1:1 or journaling moment, finish the sentence: “One generational assumption I’m actively challenging is…” Explore where it came from.

👂 Design one meeting for psychological safety: This week, experiment with a single meeting where your only design goal is this: everyone leaves feeling heard. That’s it. Reflect on what made that possible.

Gratitude goes to the Kiplinger Program in Public Affairs Journalism for supporting our API Local News Summit on Civic Discourse Across Generations. Their support expands public-facing resources like these we can make from this gathering. And if you are interested in a workshop on psychological safety or intergenerational community engagement for your team, please reach out. We’ll bring the trampoline 😉.

You might also be interested in: