Kevin Loker

Director of Strategic Partnerships and Research

Kevin Loker serves as director of strategic partnerships and research for the American Press Institute. He helps API collaborate with and complement the work of other organizations that want to improve journalism and its business. In addition, he leads research initiatives and projects on emerging challenges in journalism that advance API’s core program areas.

Kevin’s work in partnerships spans several types of work. He has helped API secure and develop grant-funded programs that support news transformation, including a Community Listening Fellowship for journalists and a Listening & Sustainability Lab for publishers of color. He has overseen programs that have distributed to local news organizations more than $300,000 in funding to experiment with audience-centered journalism. He has organized nearly a dozen invite-only summits on other emerging challenges in journalism, such as reimagining opinion sections and developing reader revenue.

Kevin has also served on research teams since API’s reinvention as an applied think tank. He’s contributed to more than a dozen national studies on news audiences with the Media Insight Project, API’s joint research initiative with Associated Press NORC Center for Public Affairs Research, as well as research into the ethics of philanthropic funding of journalism. In 2020, he served as a research assistant for the fourth edition of The Elements of Journalism: What Newspeople Should Know and the Public Should Expect (2021).

Before API, Kevin worked in digital and membership services for the Online News Association. He is a former contributor to 10,000 Words, a media industry blog. Together with his wife Laura, he received a 2017 Catholic Press Association Award for an email newsletter for Catholics.

Email Kevin at kevin.loker@pressinstitute.org or follow him @kevinloker.

By Tom Rosenstiel, Maria Ivancin, Kevin Loker, Stephen Lacy, Jeff Sonderman, and Katie Yaeger

Journalism and communication grads’ experiences with school, student media, and internships

The college journalism and communication experience At a time of enormous change, how people learn — and how academic institutions, educators, organizations, student publications and others can help them — is a major issue. The survey asked people a battery of questions about how they learn, what they learned in school and their academic experience […]
By Tom Rosenstiel, Maria Ivancin, Kevin Loker, Stephen Lacy, Jeff Sonderman, and Katie Yaeger

How journalists are dealing with changes in the industry and their jobs

Journalists’ views on new trends: sponsored content and aggregation Technology and business disruption have brought about new issues that relate to ethics and economics. The survey probed two of these in particular: the advent of sponsored content or native advertising and the issue of compensation for aggregation and curation. First, the quest for new, more […]
By Tom Rosenstiel, Maria Ivancin, Kevin Loker, Stephen Lacy, Jeff Sonderman, and Katie Yaeger

The career paths of people with communication degrees

After graduating, the great majority of these students (89%) did work in media, journalism, public relations or somewhere in communication, at least for some time. Most have had several such jobs. The largest number of people have had two to three jobs in media since graduation, and that doesn’t change much whether someone graduated between […]
By Tom Rosenstiel, Maria Ivancin, Kevin Loker, Stephen Lacy, Jeff Sonderman, and Katie Yaeger

Methodology

The survey was conducted online through the lists of alumni of the 22 participating schools and was distributed through partner alumni email lists between April 14 and June 29, 2015, with the dates varying within that time frame among different schools. The survey was executed using the SurveyMonkey survey tool, with consultation from senior SurveyMonkey […]
By Tom Rosenstiel, Maria Ivancin, Kevin Loker, Stephen Lacy, Jeff Sonderman, and Katie Yaeger

Facing Change: The needs, attitudes and experiences of people in media

A new study of communication graduates finds that people in many different industries — from commercial brands to government and think tanks — now produce what they consider journalism, and while they are pessimistic about the direction of news in general, most believe their own work in the last five years has gotten better. In […]
By Kevin Loker

We’re hosting a Millennial news discussion for #wjchat

Our recently released research about How Millennials Get News will be the discussion topic for the #wjchat Twitter chat this Wednesday, April 8, starting at 8 p.m. ET. Hop on the hashtag #wjchat then to discuss the findings and how to reach Millennial readers. The open chat Wednesday will be co-hosted by API deputy director Jeff Sonderman (@jeffsonderman) […]
By Kevin Loker

Coming soon: How Millennials get news and information

API and and the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research will be releasing a major new audience study next week. Entitled “How Millennials Get News: Inside the Habits of America’s First Digital Generation,” the report will be one of the most detailed looks yet at what kind of information adults 18-34 consume, and how. […]
By Kevin Loker

API working on a new tool for educating young news consumers

When most of us grew up it was clear what we meant by “the news.” We saw boundaries — the nightly newscast, the confines of a newspaper, bulletins on a radio broadcast. Those sources still exist, but so do many more. Young people today are immersed in media, receiving news, marketing and messages from many […]
By Kevin Loker

API is building a toolkit to help news organizations run community events

Events have become an important new tool for news publishers. For some, it’s a new source of revenue — generated through sponsorship, underwriting or admission fees. For others, events are a way of presenting journalism in new ways, a different method of distributing knowledge and creating civic conversation. Events are also a form of connecting […]
By Kevin Loker

NIE Week 2015 and API’s growing work on reaching a new generation of news consumers

As we approach News in Education Week (the first week of March, this year March 2 – 6), we wanted to share an update about the American Press Institute’s increasing work in matters related to helping young people be better news consumers and helping publishers better reach the next generation. API hosts and has built […]