Editor’s note: This is the final API Need to Know newsletter of the year! We’re grateful for your continued support and wish you and your loved ones a peaceful holiday season. We’ll be back in your inbox on Monday, Jan. 5, with a new series we hope will inspire you to make the meetings you facilitate in the new year more efficient and effective.

Empower community experts with storytelling tools

As local journalism looks to diversify its storytelling and audiences, news leaders have an opportunity to identify and create more on-ramps for individuals with deep ties to their communities. When local newsrooms give people the tools and platforms for creative storytelling, they can start building trust and supporting the creative and cultural health of their communities, too.

That’s one of the themes we heard at API’s recent Local News Summit on Inclusion, Belonging and Local Leadership, and something we asked four summit attendees to share more about. In our latest essay series, news and community leaders detail the ways they are empowering communities with skills and opportunities to have influence in their local news ecosystem:

• The War Horse holds writing seminars for military personnel and their families, offering a trauma-informed way for them to be the experts of their own stories and join the civic conversation.
• StoryWorks built a curriculum of narrative storytelling, research, oral history collection and event planning to produce vibrant, community-led explorations of Mississippi Delta history in response to the cultural extraction of the community’s history.
• AL.com partnered with local creatives, including Birmingham, Ala.’s poet laureate, to hold a community event that helped people connect with other residents who had a positive vision for the city.
• The 51st partners with D.C. natives to serve as local experts, both as cultural event facilitators and community liaisons.

Garry Pierre-Pierre, founder of The Haitian Times, writes for Nieman Lab’s Predictions for Journalism that the people he sees shaping news in the coming year aren’t in newsrooms at all, and likely don’t consider what they’re doing journalism, but are trusted messengers providing essential information to their communities.

“That’s my prediction for 2026,” Pierre-Pierre writes. “The news industry will finally realize that these informal community information networks are not peripheral to local news — they are the most functional version of it.”

• Related: A new resource for taking the guesswork out of ecosystem research (RJI)

News In Focus Headlines, resources and events aligned with API’s four areas of focus.

Civic Discourse & Democracy

>> The Vanity Fair photographer who disrupted Trumpworld’s polished image (The Washington Post)

The Post’s Shane O’Neill asked photographer Christopher Anderson about the “remarkably unvarnished portraits” he took of Trump’s closest allies for a two-part story Vanity Fair ran earlier this week. “My job is to go in and draw on my experience as a journalist and photograph what I see,” Anderson said. “I go in wanting to make an image that truthfully portrays what I witnessed at the moment that I had that encounter with the subject.”

>> Bari Weiss’ next CBS News move: Town halls with JD Vance, Sam Altman and debates about God and feminism (The Hollywood Reporter)

Following a town hall Bari Weiss hosted with Erika Kirk earlier this month, CBS News will continue to use a town hall format to interview high-profile political figures and facilitate debates on topics including God, feminism and the future of the Democratic and Republican parties.

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Culture & Inclusion

>> 5 ways to make better decisions in your newsroom (RJI)

When a newsroom decision requires consensus, it might not only slow down the decision-making process but also build frustrations in people who don’t feel they can speak up. Tara Francis Chan outlines five decision-making approaches that focus less on consensus and more on consent.

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Community Engagement & Trust

>> Sahan Journal is built for when the national media leaves (CJR)

Vanan Murugesan, the executive editor of Minnesota-based nonprofit news outlet Sahan Journal, said that having national and local outlets collaborate on coverage of ICE raids ultimately benefited readers — but the immigration-focused outlet’s strength was the trust they’ve established in the community. “We do ask ourselves, ‘What is it that we can offer to that story, to our reader, that a national or legacy outlet cannot?’” he said.

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Revenue & Resilience

>> Netflix adds podcasts in deals with iHeartMedia, Barstool Sports (The New York Times)

Netflix this week announced partnerships with iHeartMedia and Barstool Sports, bringing at least 18 video podcasts exclusively under the Netflix umbrella — and away from YouTube. Earlier this fall, the streaming company gained exclusive rights to video episodes of 16 podcasts produced by Spotify Studios and the Ringer. Audio versions of the podcasts will still be available on other platforms.

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What else you need to know

🎓** **OpenAI launches Academy for News Organizations with the American Journalism Project and The Lenfest Institute as partners (OpenAI)

ℹ️ RJI’s News Media Help Desk is live (RJI)

🕵️ Harvard secretly investigates students over Larry Summers video on Epstein (The New York Times)

🔁 Boston Globe’s former top editor returns (The New York Times)

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Weekend reads

+ The entire New Yorker archive is now fully digitized (The New Yorker)

+ Listen: 7 podcast hosts on the state of the media (The New York Times)

+ How an AM radio station in California weathered the Trump administration’s assault on media (The Associated Press)

+ The IP List highlights journalism that’s worthy of film adaptations (IndieWire)

+ It’s time for progressive philanthropy to commit to funding journalism (Scalawag)