Exclusive: AP expands local content partnerships ahead of 2024 election
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The Associated Press has inked new deals with five local newsrooms to share and distribute content ahead of the 2024 election, executives told Axios.
Why it matters: AP is one of the few national media organizations in the U.S. that still has a sizable presence at the local level. The nonprofit wire service has at least one reporter in every U.S. statehouse.
- And it continues to add more statehouse reporters through an ongoing collaboration with Report for America.
Zoom in: The new partnerships feature content-sharing agreements with nonprofit outlets based in California (CalMatters), Hawaii (Honolulu Civil Beat), Montana (Montana Free Press), Nebraska (Nebraska Journalism Trust) and South Dakota (South Dakota News Watch).
- Those newsrooms were selected based on having a record of fact-based, independent journalism, a spokesperson said. They were also considered for their presence in areas where the local news environment is challenged.
- The newsrooms get access to AP reporting to distribute to their local audiences for free, while AP gets access to their local coverage to distribute to its licensed media partners.
Zoom out: These deals are especially helpful to local newsrooms covering stories of national significance.
- Patty Epler, editor and general manager of Honolulu Civil Beat, cited that advantage in a statement, saying the deal will "help bring Civil Beat's stories about Hawaii and the Pacific to a much bigger audience at a time when it's important for people to understand what is going on in this region."
Between the lines: The new partnerships expand on the first agreement of this kind announced between AP and the Texas Tribune in March.
- In that deal, the Texas Tribune got access to AP's Texas news and its immigration coverage and AP got to distribute the Tribune's reporting on Texas to its members and customers.
- "These agreements are exciting opportunities for AP journalism to reach new audiences in an election year and simultaneously bolster the AP news report from states that can sometimes be overlooked," AP U.S. news director Josh Hoffner told Axios.
The big picture: AP sees investments in local news "as essential both to democracy and to combatting misinformation," executive editor and senior vice president Julie Pace told Axios.
- Ahead of this year's election, AP will offer hundreds of nonprofit newsrooms across the country access to U.S. election results.
State of play: AP has been pushing to expand its focus on local news more aggressively since the pandemic.
- In 2021, it expanded its local news experiment called StoryShare to help newsrooms quickly share information around COVID.
- Since then, it expanded StoryShare to geographical networks operating in 20 states. It has also added six StoryShare collaborations across various topics, including climate, Indigenous people and education.
- In 2022, it promoted Katie Oyan to a new position of deputy news director for local news success.
- Oyan's team oversees the publication of nearly 400 "Localize It" guides that provide tips and expertise from AP journalists nationwide when covering specific issues, such as the opioid crisis or the recent eclipse.
