What is the API Experience?

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The "API Experience," created 60 years ago, is a magical, common bond, developed and nurtured through API's one-of-a-kind learning experience.

Many alums tell us their week at API was the best professional experience of their lives. Within the span of a few days to a week, strangers find themselves sharing experiences, gaining insights, discarding "conventional wisdom," creating strategies and developing friendships that will last a lifetime.

This is the API Experience.

The American Press Institute building in Reston, Virginia, is nestled in the beautiful Northern Virginia countryside.

Inside, large and acoustically perfect seminar rooms provide the stage for thousands of hours of discussion, debate and intellectual challenge during the year. An additional cluster of smaller rooms provides havens for small-group discussions that range from sanguine to rowdy.

A continuing emphasis on the technology of the news industry is reflected in computer simulations in which members set goals, plan strategies and see the results - results that could mean success or failure in an actual marketplace.

Always, a pleasant and highly efficient staff tends to visitor needs, no detail being too small for their attention. The atmosphere is at once academic and thoughtful, yet highly energetic, the product of competing ideas vying forcefully for attention. During the average year, more than 1,000 media professionals from all over the world find their way to API seminars.

API’s Special Role
There are multiple training opportunities available to today’s news professional: small, regional workshops for some employees; convention attendance for some; full seminars at remote sites for others; and university-based, full-semester training for others.

Within this broad range of training possibilities, API stands out as unique.

The Institute’s meticulous program planning, the advance work done by seminar members, the caliber of experts who serve as discussion leaders and the API facility combine to provide an environment that is extraordinarily conducive to learning.

Most of the leaders of U.S. and Canadian newspapers today have been API seminar members, discussion leaders or have served on API’s advisory panels or board of directors.

API’s professional staff members plan and moderate the programs and recruit the best and brightest news professionals, management consultants, business leaders and educators as discussion leaders.

While other training centers offer a faculty approach that may focus on the philosophies of one or two instructors, API exposes seminar members to the thinking of a dozen or more different discussion leaders and guest speakers. This approach affords API attendees the unique opportunity to hear multiple perspectives on the key industry issues of the day and to select from those perspectives the best approaches for their own work environments.

A University of Ideas
Member preparation begins several weeks before the seminar convenes, with each member examining his or her own company and job performance and supplying background information to discussion leaders and fellow members. For many seminars, members spend hours critiquing products from fellow attendees and preparing for a detailed exchange of ideas in smaller clinic-group sessions.

The seminar day normally begins at 8:30 or 9 a.m. and continues until 5 p.m. After having dinner together, members often disperse to small-group clinic sessions during which they critique each other’s work. In the evening, members gather in the API hospitality room at the beautiful Sheraton Reston Hotel to discuss the events of the day, to share ideas and problems, and to commiserate and revel in the special challenges of their work.

Area metropolitan newspapers and the Freedom Forum host special receptions and dinners for our seminar groups. And, there are free nights in Washington, D.C., and Georgetown, or at the inspirational monuments of our nation’s capital, or at some of the finest restaurants in the world.

The API experience doesn’t end when a seminar ends. The Institute’s alumni cherish the rich, rewarding and lasting bonds of personal and professional friendships formed through the days and nights of working together.

Factors in Attendance
There are no academic or job requirements for attending an API seminar, and applicants need not have the precise title that is listed in the seminar description. Cross-training occurs frequently. For instance, a general manager may wish to attend a circulation seminar, or an editor may attend a marketing seminar.

API has a strong commitment to the training of minorities and women, and gives special consideration to their applications. The Institute urges publishers and chief executives to assist in the development of minority members by nominating them for API programs.

The Issues Series
Complementing API’s intensive management and skills-training seminars are programs designed for discussion of key issues facing the news industry.

The best-known of these programs is the annual J. Montgomery Curtis Memorial Seminar, named for the former API director. Held each fall in Reston, the program was launched with a major grant from Knight Ridder, Inc., plus matching funding from other friends of API.