Community Engagement & Trust

True or untrue, fair or unfair, what is being shared is the perception you are dealing with in the community. Learning about this is why you are there.

At the API Local News Summit on Rural Journalism, Community and Sustainability in Tulsa, journalists noted one skill they had and could leverage more and one skill they needed to develop to be better conveners, facilitators and connectors. Four categories of skills stuck out that local journalists and news leaders need to better and more impactfully embrace these new roles.

When we looked at the latest research on how Americans view news about elections, we noted several findings local media especially may want to use to start conversations about how they gain trust this year with their community.

Good convening requires strong facilitation skills, influential and empathic leadership skills, and different listening skills than an interview — things many journalists likely didn’t learn or anticipate when they signed up for the job. To be good conveners, local media need resources and opportunity to equip their journalists with these skills.

The urgency to establish more Spanish-language newsrooms or those dedicated to serving Hispanic communities cannot be overstated. We do not only need more hyper local journalism projects like ours, but we need more transparency and clarity with the existing media organizations.

In 2023, 13 news organizations were part of a cohort assembled by the American Press Institute to track the diversity of people quoted in their [...]

As news organizations work to grow and nurture relationships in their communities, many are focusing on ways to not only track their outreach but also build in the accountability necessary to improve.

Call for applications is now closed. Americans use news and information to make decisions and thrive. But local news has other roles that complement gathering [...]

Community listening is a crucial tenet of improving community engagement, along with asset mapping and collaborating with other local news outlets — all part of the API Inclusion Index cohort’s efforts toward better engaging communities of color.

If we want to advance care in our community storytelling work – which I see as a key role of journalism – we also need to practice self-care.