Insights, tools and research to advance journalism
API’s invests significant time, thought and resources in producing research that we believe is definitive and useful. We address the most-pressing issues facing news organizations — understanding audiences, creating business models, and internal transformation — in a way that helps the leaders and the strivers in those organizations form plans and take action.
This page collects all of API’s in-depth research of several forms — white papers that share insights from in-person events, strategy studies that help publishers form their own plans, and survey research analysis that helps publishers serve the needs of modern news audiences.
We have thoroughly entered the age of mobile news. People are shifting so rapidly to smartphones and tablets, various data suggest, that mobile devices in the last year became the primary platforms for news. With that comes a whole new level of uncertainty and opportunity for news publishers. The American Press Institute recently gathered more than 40 […]
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This research was conducted by the Media Insight Project — an initiative of the American Press Institute and the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research Introduction Contrary to the conventional wisdom about media consumption dividing along generational or political lines, a new survey finds that the nature of the news itself — the topic […]
Think about the mobile apps or websites your organization uses to reach the public, and ask yourself two questions: what do they do, and who are they for? If the answers that come back are “everything” and “everyone,” we’re about to change that. A mobile app or website that serves all your traditional content to […]
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In recent years news publishers have grappled with an uncomfortable realization: The traditional revenue streams of display advertising and reader subscriptions may not be sufficient to support them in a digital age. Digital display ads command unimpressive rates and engagement, with clickthroughs measured in the tenths of percentage points. Digital subscriptions have recently helped some […]
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As publishing has moved to digital forms, journalists have discovered it is quite possible — and sometimes preferable — to tell a news story without writing an article. But how? The American Press Institute, with the help of Melody Kramer from NPR and Kennedy Elliott from the Washington Post, packed a room at the Online […]
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News companies, especially newspapers, were historically organized to pursue mass audiences. The goal was to build up the biggest possible audience by covering the widest array of general interest topics. That’s no more. In a consumer-driven media age, in which charging for digital content is becoming a large part of the business model, publishers have […]
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If the last decade in news was defined by the migration of audience to the web, the next will be defined by the shift to smartphones and tablets.
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As news organizations increasingly rely on subscription revenue, this shift demands a new approach toward audience. Publishers must understand user behavior better, take advantage of analytics and be more audience focused. A leading market economist and two executives from the New York Times outlined increasingly sophisticated methods to hone in on reader preferences during a […]
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Moving a media organization from free to paid content requires more than a meter. It also demands new skills, a deeper understanding of the audience, and improved content, both to maximize revenue and ensure consumers continue to see value worth paying for. Listening to innovators from several companies—from the New York Times to Gannett, Atlantic […]
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One path for transforming a local media company for the digital age is to build brand not simply around the traditional notions of news and advertising but around a deeper idea of civic leadership and engagement. This is the approach at The Gazette Company, an independently owned media group in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. The goal […]
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