Recommendations to enhance how news leaders and non-news experts inform each other’s work

We can all play a role in understanding and improving how the free press serves an inclusive democracy.

This was a yearlong project to understand how news leaders and non-news experts inform each others’ work, in API programming and beyond. We remain committed to understanding and further facilitating these relationships.

For those interested in similar work, we are outlining implications and recommendations.

For nonprofits and universities seeking to advance journalism:

• Weave non-news expertise into programming centered on challenges. Our field will do well in addressing the challenges of local journalism with a wide aperture. For example, what we learn from academic literature about slowing polarization or political violence can be integrated into how journalism support organizations help news leaders with coverage and planning. But the awareness of context also matters. When you’re focused on solving a problem, research is most helpful — rather than asking most news leaders to consult on top of busy and demanding schedules.
• Create space for in-person interaction that builds social ties. Just as our field has put value on industry conferences and networking, it might also look for opportunities to help journalists and non-news experts connect in person. In our experience, this is where the genuine exchange happens and the opportunity for later collaboration arises — in physical settings far different than the most typical journalists-researcher interaction of an interview.
• Create space for free exploration and collaboration between news leaders and researchers on challenges. For more news leaders and researchers to inform each others’ work, they will need more structure to support these collaborations. Fellowships are a particular avenue for serving local journalists since they can be expanded, as are summits and online spaces that nourish bonds and facilitate exchange. The practical needs of most journalists should be kept in mind. For example, during the Covid pandemic JSK Journalism Fellowships launched a “Community Impact Fellowship,” which allowed fellows to remain in their communities. Nieman Fellowships offers shorter fellowships in addition to academic year fellowships. The Reynolds Journalism Institute offers in-person as well as remote fellowships. Journalists also benefit from the cohort experience of these programs, which provides important emotional and intellectual support.
• Explore how these insights might fit into content and resources.  While understanding ideas from research should not feel like homework to busy journalists, journalists still need to keep up with innovations in their field and use resources to help them. How might ideas from research and researchers themselves be elevated to journalists when they are in a challenge-addressing mode? On this point, there is a culture of “expert source lists” and experimentation in resource design (e.g., meeting discussion guides, decision trees, etc.) to build upon.
• Apply the inverse ideas. We’ve seen the benefits of having non-news experts in our API Local News Summits, primarily serving news leaders. Both sides benefit. What would it look like for more news leaders to participate in largely research spaces? Would their questions and fresh eyes — not in interview mode — enhance conference and paper presentations? What would deliberate programming for researchers based on this approach for news leaders lead to for researchers focused on listening and learning in a polarized world?

For researchers and civil society leaders wanting to improve journalism:

• Consider how your work applies to local news (not just national). While necessary attention is on the national news and information landscape, local media is more trusted — and Americans recognize the importance local media plays in community well-being. Moreover, local media are eager and open to how to better serve their neighbors. Many are already leaning into local identity and in-person engagement, ready for practical and tested ideas that help them serve and even improve their community. If civil society and philanthropy look at local solutions as an essential part of change, local media are logical partners.
• Understand the unique pressures facing local news today. While news leaders are eager for this work, their conditions are challenging. Local newspapers continue to close, and staffs are shrinking while the information landscape shifts. Covering current events, from disasters to divisive politics, weighs heavily. How any effort will sustain the business and its people should be part of the equation.
• Design resources for the demands of news leadership today. If the pressures are intense, the interventions and even the presentation of information must be realistic. Non-news experts in our interviews noted how leaders asked about clear, concrete applicability of ideas. Some noted how they make meeting templates and scripts that news leaders can use or adapt. Designing for speed and accessibility is critical.
• Look for informal opportunities to share insights with local news. Sparking ideas is just as important as sharing concrete evidence or templates. Non-news experts and news leaders who met in our events went on to connect outside of them, setting up calls for the researcher to help brainstorm ideas for a new kind of political coverage and inviting the editor to campus to discuss journalism. Friendly inclusion of one another as collaborators to improve community well-being is doable.
• Build community around applying research to improving journalism. One-off collaboration and study can be powerful, and we have seen interest in shared conversations with researchers about media’s opportunities in bridging divides. This was surprising for us, but many non-news experts we involved in events expressed interest in getting to further know the other non-news experts we invited. It may be something to nourish and indicate the interest in media among depolarization researchers and civil society leaders more generally.

For all

• Look for local and regional opportunities to create these exchanges. While local news has faced significant challenges, one bright spot is the response. Community leaders are coming together to form a range of state-level and regional supports for local journalism ecosystems, such as the NC Local News Workshop in North Carolina and the Oklahoma Media Center. As these operations grow — and perhaps so do the number of local chapters in the national philanthropic Press Forward movement — there are additional opportunities to help local news leaders and non-news experts shape each other’s work. One-off collaborations that are featured in this report, formal and informal, often had ties by geography; these spaces where people meet and form relationships could be further nurtured.

Funders interested in helping media learn from research they fund may also find these ideas helpful and worthy of support.

For our part, we are interested in connecting with individual researchers, university centers, civil society groups and others who want to improve journalism and how it serves the whole of our communities. If you are interested in this goal, please contact us at hello@pressinstitute.org.

This project was made possible through the support of a grant from Templeton World Charity Foundation (funder DOI 501100011730) to better understand how local news leaders and researchers can learn from the other to improve local journalism and limit polarization in their communities (TWCF-2023-32603). The opinions expressed in this report and its excerpt are those of the organizer(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of Templeton World Charity Foundation, Inc.