The API experience

Several elements create the very heart of “The API Experience”: a custom-crafted program by a member of the Institute’s senior leadership team … a series of topics carefully selected to achieve an intense and transformative experience … knowledgeable discussion leaders who diligently prepare their presentations so that they addresses the attendees’ greatest needs … the Institute staff that takes care of every detail, no matter how small, to create a quality and personalized experience … and, of course, energetic and focused seminar participants, who are passionate about their careers, their companies and their industry.


More than 40,000 media executives and thousands of discussion leaders have had the rich “API Experience,” and over the past half century much about the Institute has changed. But the basic founding principle – providing a forum for newsmedia executives, ranging from recently minted managers to CEOs, to discuss, debate and find solutions to the industry’s greatest challenges – hasn’t. 

It’s about people: From the vice president/digital of a major metropolitan newspaper to the city editor from the Heartland, they come from different worlds but they share similar hopes, goals and aspirations.

Read The API Story >>

Seminars and Workshops: For 65 years, newsmedia executives, managers and staffers have relied on API for their career development.


What we do

For 65 years, API has been dedicated to its mission of developing leaders and executives by providing leadership development opportunities in all areas of news and editorial management as well as the business of running newsmedia companies. Whatever medium newspapers use to disseminate their messages, API is committed to enabling the newspaper industry to manage its customers, content and operations; deliver its messages in the most effective and efficient ways; and provide tools for transformation that will sustain the news function into the future.

At the very core of that mission are API’s seminar offerings. A seminar at API is unlike any other education opportunity available to newspaper executives. It’s not an academic-style series of lectures, although we do bring in as speakers some of the leading academics in their fields. It’s not just a roundtable that examines current practices and ideas, although the peer-to-peer sharing of knowledge and experience are unmatched in the industry. And it’s not just skills training.

An API seminar has a unique formula involving the Institute’s executive staff and skilled discussion leaders – experts in their topic areas – who lead highly interactive sessions focused on critical topics for transformational success. They guide seminar attendees to a sweeping vision of the successful newsmedia organization of the future and then help them craft blueprints to realize that vision in their own organizations.

Seminar groups are small, and comprise some of the most high-potential current and future leaders in the industry, making the whole greater than the sum of the parts.



Topics we cover

In order to help newsmedia organizations develop the tools and people to transform companies and careers through interactive learning experiences, API seminars focus on the industry’s most critical issues, challenges, concepts and opportunities. They range from creating and launching a mobile strategy to maximizing sales force effectiveness and developing the next generation of media managers.

API seminars are not educational silos: They are cross-functional, cross-platform events. We recommend that teams of executives from the same company, who represent different disciplines, attend the same seminar. They will be much better prepared to develop, launch and lead new initiatives that were discussed around API’s round table.


Discussion Leaders

API is a place for sharing: sharing of ideas, of experiences, of the most successful strategies and operating techniques from the best news companies in the world. At the heart of this process are hundreds of women and men -- an experienced, talented collection of media professionals, management consultants, executives and academics. They volunteer their time and talents for the benefit of those dedicated to the business of news.

Recruited to spend from 90 minutes to a full day with seminar members, these guest experts spend dozens of hours preparing, in many cases surveying members in advance to determine their primary job-related concerns and needs so that working sessions can be tailored carefully to address member interests. It's the skillful and, at times, passionate energies brought to API each year by its hundreds of discussion leaders that make the API Experience the success that it is. The primary role of any API discussion leader is not to lecture, but rather to involve the membership in active, energetic and productive discussion. An API discussion leader’s hours are long and the honorarium is modest.

Wanted: Desire, Passion and Energy

If you have the desire to share new ideas and learned wisdom, the passion for the people and the process of the news industry, and the energy and platform skills to guide and drive candid discussion of important issues, you have what it takes to be an API discussion leader.

If there’s something you’d like to bring to the discussions at API, please send an e-mail with your ideas to:

Carol Ann Riordan
Interim Executive Director



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