Revenue & Resilience

We gathered news leaders and non-news experts to discuss what it looks like to build sustainable youth engagement efforts into their coverage and fundraising. We asked four summit participants to share more about the ways they are funding experiments with youth engagement in their communities.

The study’s findings likely align with news engagement behavior you’re already noticing, but the data across age groups shows these shifts cannot be written off as a passing trend that younger generations will age out of. Here are four key takeaways and what they mean for local news.

This report draws on a nationally representative survey of teens ages 13–17 and adults 18 and older, providing one of the most comprehensive, generationally comparative looks at how Americans navigate an increasingly complex news, information and media ecosystem.

Local News Day highlights five ways these organizations matter within their communities. We’ve rounded up some of our favorite examples of this work in each category.

Case studies, like the ones in our 2025 impact report, are an opportunity to highlight those findings and spotlight some of the organizations that have partnered with API to collaborate, innovate and advance solutions for their communities. 

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.