Revenue & Resilience

As research continues to inform this slice of the news industry, we’ll continue learning, too. Who gets to be called a journalist in 2025 and beyond? What is the future of trustworthy information, especially considering the access to and trust for online content creators? How might journalism adapt to the rise, or co-opt the styles, of news influencers?

What if we started looking at our output as a product, not a service? Too often, we think "product" means a fancy app or a new website. But product isn’t about tech. It’s about intention.

When we began asking what kind of stories still mattered to Baca County, we realized many of them weren’t “breaking news” but generational memory. And the paper was the last remaining platform that treated those memories with care and context.

Leaning into local identity and history can move our journalism from ‘we provide facts alone’ to ‘we provide facts and serve other important community functions.’

Here are a few ideas for activating your archives that participants brought to the recent API Summit on Local History, Community and Identity in Nashville — plus some ideas we all brought home to try out in the weeks and months to come.

Programming will involve both publicly available training, including webinars, and resources for the field, such as those from API’s work with influencer collaborations.

As digital platforms and their users continue to grow and change, the ways news outlets build strategies around them will, too. These are themes we believe are key for digital transformation and sustaining and growing local news.

The next API Local News Summit will be on how local and community-based media might engender a local identity and embrace their geography and history. We’ll help news leaders consider how they contribute to a community’s well-being by fostering a sense of place — and how, when done with care, this might offer new ways to sustain local news.

This guide features strategies tested and proven by local news organizations that participated in the Table Stakes Local News Transformation Program along the themes of product thinking, revenue, engaged journalism, collaboration and managing change.

Examples of how newsrooms have spun up live events, products and third spaces to experiment with new sources of revenue while fostering community belonging.