It’s not just journalists who are overwhelmed with information. Audiences are too. People are consuming media all day long, in one form or another. So instead of merely contributing to information overload, news organizations need to help audiences navigate it. And that means focusing on quality over quantity. Many publishers are actually growing audiences by […]

It’s surprisingly difficult for organizations of any kind to stop doing things. And the more complex the thing (or the organization), the harder it can be to kill. Some of the reasons why may sound familiar to anyone working in a newsroom: Leaders and managers aren’t aware of all the projects happening across the organization, […]

We’ve published a lot of articles at API about innovative things that news organizations are doing — they’re hosting events, they’re launching newsletters, they’re starting new beats, they’re translating more stories, they’re running reader hotlines, they’re campaigning for civility. All of it is good and meaningful work. But you know what our most popular piece […]

Keeping opinion local, how newsrooms can help women deal with burnout, and the White House’s plan to engage local reporters

When news organizations face cuts, opinion editors and writers are some of the first on the chopping block: Their work can be replaced by that of national syndicated columnists, saving precious dollars. But new research suggests that the long-term effects of that decision may be detrimental to local news organizations. Local news audiences, treated to […]

How to listen to your community, social media managers learn to log off, and how to learn from and act on audience data

How to reach an under-35 audience, journalism’s ‘elite’ problem, and get the newest lessons about how to respond to misinformation

Not all Americans embrace journalism’s core values, how the pandemic shaped data journalism, and should new owners abolish print

Americans who value loyalty and authority most highly tend to be the most skeptical of the news media. In experiments with readers, however, we see promising signs that emphasizing these values in stories when they are relevant could broaden the appeal of those stories and of the media generally, without alienating people who revere other […]

The deep divides over trust in the news media are usually portrayed as largely ideological. Democrats are seven times more likely than Republicans to say they trust the mainstream media, and independents are four times as likely.1 But the argument over media trust often has the feel of people talking past each other—many journalists denying […]