Civic Discourse & Democracy

If you are in a local or community-centered news organization and are working on projects that empower young people in your community or equip young talent for civic engagement, we encourage you to apply for a remaining spot at the API Local News Summit on Youth Trust and Civic Resilience.

We believe local news plays a critical role in cultivating local identity and civic engagement. But today’s youth need to be brought into a relationship with a local news institution just as they should be brought into and affirmed that they are active members of civic life today. That’s why we’ll convene our API Local News Summit on Youth Trust and Civic Resilience in March.

As the American Press Institute marks 80 years, we’ll honor our legacy by continuing to respond to the evolving needs of news leaders. Our upcoming API Local News Summits will explore three critical places where democracy and sustainability intersect.

Reaching younger audiences has long been a challenge for media organizations. As platforms evolve, trust in news shifts and news avoidance grows, it can feel especially difficult to connect with and serve multigenerational audiences in an authentic and sustainable way. How can news leaders do their part to represent and include community perspectives from members of different age groups?

For us, we knew one of our biggest hurdles to success would be challenging the assumptions, both spoken and unspoken, we held for others. Here’s what we’ve learned over the past three years of gathering multigenerational problem-solvers.

Generational tension has always existed, of course, but today it is amplified by several factors, both in our communities and our newsrooms. We asked five summit participants to share more about the ways they are engaging and serving multigenerational audiences.

The American Press Institute is hosting a local summit on October 9-10 in Washington, D.C., to empower news leaders in enhancing residents’ leadership and influence over their community’s information ecosystem.

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, fostering multidirectional conversations, a shared sense of place and joint ownership over our civic future.

Reaching people across age groups is a complex proposition for news leaders. It involves identifying issues and topics that resonate with all ages, creating content on multiple platforms, and finding ways for people to move past assumptions about one another. But the current moment in America demands this kind of work.

The American Press Institute is convening its second API Local News Summit of 2025, addressing a challenge shared by local and community-based media of all types.