Lilly Chapa

Richmond

Editorial Manager at American Press Institute

Freelance Writer and Editor at Freelance

Editorial manager @ampress | Writer, editor, lizard enthusiast | TX - OK - DC - Baltimore - RVA | Opinions my own

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Articles

Assess the value of the experiment

3 weeks ago | americanpressinstitute.org | Lilly Chapa

Once API’s influencer cohort ended their experiments last fall, they were encouraged to expand their retrospective beyond assessing what worked and what didn’t, instead considering value creation questions. Was the experiment was valuable for the newsroom? Their community? The influencer? How could similar campaigns be more valuable in the future? Below are some ways to approach a retrospective on an influencer partnership, and examples of insights the 2024 cohort walked away with.
Project checklists for a smooth campaign

1 month ago | americanpressinstitute.org | Lilly Chapa

Editor’s Note: The American Press Institute invites U.S. local and community-based media to apply for our Influencers Learning Cohort 2025. Participating news organizations will receive $3,000 to establish connections and collaborate with local influencers or trusted messengers. This program builds upon the work of a 2024 cohort that fostered local media collaborations with trusted messengers and influencers on nonpartisan journalism related to the elections. Learn more and apply by March 31.
Finding an influencer with impact

1 month ago | americanpressinstitute.org | Lilly Chapa

Partnering with local influencers enables news outlets to reach highly engaged, trusted voices within specific communities to foster greater trust. These influencers play a key role in bridging the gap between journalism and local communities, offering newsrooms the chance to connect with relevant audiences in ways that traditional — or transactional — engagement can’t.
Partner with influencers: Navigating ethical implications

1 month ago | americanpressinstitute.org | Lilly Chapa

Editor’s Note: The American Press Institute continues to build on our influencer partnership work. Last week, we shared a detailed step-by-step process to navigate influencer collaborations. We are also excited to share that API will fund and facilitate a second influencer learning cohort. Up to 12 participating newsrooms will receive grants to conduct an influencer collaboration experiment and participate in learning calls in May and July 2025.
Develop your influencer strategy: A step-by-step process to demystify influencer collaborations and enhance community outreach

1 month ago | americanpressinstitute.org | Ariel Zirulnick |Lilly Chapa

In 2022, when I was the senior editor for community engagement at LAist, we conducted a citywide survey to find out what Angelenos were most focused on as Mayor Karen Bass took office. We knew that if we distributed the survey only on our owned platforms, we wouldn’t reach as diverse an audience as we wanted. If we were going to use the survey to help make decisions about how to focus our reporting on the new administration, we needed to cast a wider net.
Partner with influencers

1 month ago | americanpressinstitute.org | Lilly Chapa

Welcome to API’s March Need to Know Special Edition, where we’ll walk you through what it takes for your news outlet to experiment with influencer collaborations. The insights and resources we’ll share are largely informed by the experiences of newsrooms that participated in our recent Election + Influencers Learning Cohort for the Knight Election Hub. Americans face increasing news fatigue. But that doesn’t mean they spend less time online or that people care less about their communities.
Priming the newsroom

1 month ago | americanpressinstitute.org | Lilly Chapa

Many newsrooms approach the idea of influencers apprehensively. What can you do to assuage staff concerns so there is space to get excited about the opportunities? This can be one of the most challenging and time-consuming parts of this work, but you can’t bypass it. Avoidance often results in these concerns bubbling up and derailing the collaboration further down the line. Building buy-in starts with creating a space where people can share their concerns.
Products that reinforce your identity

1 month ago | americanpressinstitute.org | Lilly Chapa

How can you bring new life — and new revenue opportunities — to the same hyperlocal content? What about a non-news revenue stream that gets your name into unexpected places? From building on nostalgia and a shared sense of place to repackaging evergreen content into reliably updated guides or even collaborating with community institutions to create something new, products relevant to your community can offer new ways for audiences to engage with local news and funders to support your work.
Building Trust: An ethical roadmap for journalists who partner with influencers

2 months ago | americanpressinstitute.org | Mollie Muchna |Lilly Chapa

Disclosure example: Voter guideIn an effort to hear from more people in our community, we collaborated with [xx] to find out what voters in [city] are most curious about ahead of the election. We used your feedback to create this voter guide that addresses your most pressing questions. This is a paid partnership, meaning we paid [xx] to co-report this story, but the content in the guide went through the same rigorous fact-checking and editing process as any [newsroom name’s] content.
Community-driven coverage and convenings

2 months ago | americanpressinstitute.org | Lilly Chapa

Local news organizations are uniquely positioned to not only share news and information with their communities, but play other roles outside of gathering the facts — a social connector, a convener of people across differences and a facilitator for addressing community challenges. In some ways, local and community-based media have long served this role. Opinion sections, for instance, are one way legacy newspapers have created space for conversation about what people find important or necessary.