Welcome to our June Need to Know series on supporting culture of learning and skill-sharing in news organizations. Each week, members of the 2024-25 Table Stakes Alumni Advisory Board will introduce you to best practices developed by news leaders across the country and share ideas on how to start creating similar strategies for your teams.
We’re all curious — that’s what binds us together in the journalism industry. News organizations are inherently interesting and exciting places to work, simply because of the range of things we get to learn and the colleagues whom we learn from.
I’m grateful that lifelong learning and continuous development are shared values in our line of work. And I believe the connections we share can help us be more resourceful and engaged, especially when there’s adversity.
While speaking to news leaders ahead of the API Local News Summit on fostering belonging and collaboration in 2024, many noted the common challenges we face: a constant crunch for time, limited capacity and competing demands.
Developing a strong culture of learning emerged as a positive theme among news organizations that were able to weather the storms and support their staff through change.
We continued the summit’s work by focusing on opportunities to connect and collaborate in news organizations and assembled a working group of news leaders determined to find solutions to help their peers navigate the process of building capacity and strengthening cultures of learning.
This month, advisory board members representing the Table Stakes Local News Transformation Program will share tips and experiences from news leaders who seek to empower staff with opportunities to learn and build skills. We hope you’ll take these ideas and try them out in ways that work for your organization.
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We’ll dig into three areas that are important to the future of local journalism: civic trust, people and culture and organizational resilience.
Share how the American Press Institute helped change how you lead, think or serve your community — and pay it forward to those shaping local news next.
Across all of our work, we’ve learned that the best solutions start with the people closest to the problem. We use evidence to inform what we do, create room to experiment and share what we learn so others can build on it.
