Connect, discuss, act: The potential of local news clubs to build stronger communities

This is a series on Better News highlighting takeaways from the American Press Institute’s Local News Summits.

This piece features insights gathered at the API Local News Summit on Civic Discourse Across Generations, held in Denver in June 2025.

More from previous summits:

• 4 ways local news can build local identity — and bring in new revenue
• How to build resilience for yourself and your news organization
• Building Belonging, Brick by Brick: Advice for news leaders on supporting inclusive workplaces

Imagine what would happen if people of any age could gather intentionally and regularly in their communities to actively learn and discuss the latest local news, in a way that fosters deeper connections and understanding of local issues. What if this was accompanied by the local news outlets as part of that conversation?

What if the act of consuming and assessing news wasn’t a lonely process? 

That was one of the questions we explored during the API Local News Summit on Civic Discourse Across Generations, which took place in Denver in June.

As a journalist, I am always curious to learn engagement strategies for sourcing from the community at events, especially before the publication of an article. But what inspired me the most during the group discussions at the summit was a simple yet powerful question: What can newsrooms do better to incentivize local civic participation and include more perspectives from people of different ages?

Below are some takeaways from what I heard and saw at the summit around those topics. Hopefully, it can inspire you to dive into some journalism-related event experiments in your own communities.

Natalia Ramírez presenting on Day 1 of the API Local News Summit on June 11. (Marita Pérez Díaz/API)

Bring people together to talk about the news

When Radio Ambulante’s Natalia Ramírez shared the success story of the podcast’s Listening Clubs in one of the breakout sessions, the eyes of the journalists at the table were glowing with excitement. The listening clubs are spaces where people meet in person to listen to podcasts from Radio Ambulante, and then have a heartfelt, deep group conversation around it. In past surveys, 91% of the listening club participants agreed that the quality of the discussions was higher in the clubs than on social media.

The group discussion inspired by Radio Ambulante’s listening clubs highlighted ideas, questions and concerns about the approach. Here are some things to consider when assessing whether a listening club might be a good fit for your news organization:

• Replicate the model for written or multimedia content. One summiter suggested a similar approach “like a book club, but for news.” What would it look like to bring people of diverse backgrounds together to discuss the news from the past week?
• Prepare for the presence of contrarians. What if trolls show up to the group? Could this be an opportunity to explore differences face-to-face instead of behind a screen? Radio Ambulante has a code of conduct and frameworks in place to assure the space is truly beneficial for all.
• Consider what role your newsroom might play in this type of environment. Having journalists participate in a local news club could lead to increased media literacy and trust in news by sharing the behind-the-scenes of the reporting process. It could also create an opportunity for people to go from the passive consumption of news to the active discussion and participation in civic discourse of their community.

Identify barriers of access with empathy

Warm Cookies of the Revolution calls itself a civic health club, a space to exercise “the civic muscle,” said founder Evan Weissman. The Denver-based nonprofit has been organizing public events for over a decade, with an innovative lens that mixes activities like music, comedy or sports to talk about critical issues to the communities like safety, immigration or economics.

One of the main problems they hoped the events might solve was how difficult it was for people to participate in person, often because of costs, distance, time constraints, cultural differences or family responsibilities.

When planning a gathering, Weissman explained they always try to put themselves in the shoes of potential participants to identify and lower the barriers of access. Here are some of the challenges they consider and ways they might address them:

• Parents or caretakers can’t find time → provide childcare
• Multilingual participants may not be able to confidently participate in English → provide interpretation services
• The event takes place in the evening or during mealtime → provide food
• Some participants may not have reliable transportation → choose event locations accessible by public transit
• The event may not feel applicable or welcoming to multiple generations → approach the life context of participants with an empathetic lens to identify barriers to communication or understanding

For a news organization trying to start a local news club, the barriers to participation would be similar to those faced by Warm Cookies of the Revolution, as low-income and diverse communities are not only more likely to live in news deserts but also may have less resources to participate at in-person events.

Weissman gave us a good tip: when conceiving an event, he asks himself, “Would my dad come? Would my neighbor? Would someone in my life who is working hard and raising a family and likes sports or shopping want to come to this?”

Evan Weissman (second from left) leads a small group discussion about how to organize public events to support civic participation. (Marita Pérez Díaz/API)

Build a sustainable meeting model

Costs and capacity are often roadblocks for small newsrooms that are already struggling to keep afloat doing the basics of reporting, let alone other journalism engagement strategies.

At the summit, attendees shared ways they team up with other local organizations such as museums, libraries, local artists and businesses to lessen the burden. Radio Ambulante did even more: they created an open-source blueprint for replicating the listening clubs by anyone, anywhere. Instead of relying only on their capacity to organize such spaces, they facilitated and empowered their audiences to do it themselves.

In our discussions around the table, everyone agreed that there is definitely not a one-size-fits-all solution on how a news club could happen. Steps to creating a self-sustaining group, they said, might include:

• The news organization would create the concept and kickstart the events in their community
• Leaders would collect the learnings of what does and doesn’t work during a trial period
• Along with the input of regular participants, compile those thoughts into a framework
• Pass along the framework — and the baton — to the community to keep the project going in a collaborative effort

Gather to celebrate, not just to problem-solve

News clubs and solutions circles not only offer the opportunity to share insights of people from different generations, but can allow people to digest traumatic news events with others. They can, for example, make it easier for someone to learn about events that negatively affect their lives, directly or indirectly.

But news avoidance is still a big problem. Either in person or online, people that reject news anticipate that it “will drain them emotionally and that consuming it comes at too high a cost in terms of their energy and mood,” noted nonprofit Trusting News regarding a Reuters Institute study.

If we want people to engage and participate in gatherings around news — and civics, by extension — the events need to be fun. Some of the news and non-news organizations at the summit shared that something that has worked for their events is involving anything related to arts, crafts or music alongside the hard topics.

Warm Cookies of the Revolution’s civic activities work because they’re fun, their website notes — “Instead of shaming people for not being more involved, we make civic life as irresistible and joyous as possible!”

A thought I take with me from the API summit is that newsrooms have an opportunity to be more intentional and creative while serving a community at a hyperlocal level, with people of different ages and backgrounds who want not only to consume information passively and alone, but to understand, grieve or celebrate what’s happening around them and take action together. It’s especially important during this complicated time for the media to lean into our humanness and foster that real connection with our communities, not only as audiences but as people who need and want to create real positive change in every corner of America.

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If you have any experience with similar initiatives to a local news club, please share it with API — we would love to hear from you. You can email me at marita.perezdiaz@pressinstitute.org.

And if you happen to be in the Seattle area and this inspires you to facilitate one, let me know. I would love to join your local news club!