Monday, March 10, 2025

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Partner with influencers

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.

Navigating ethical implications

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. Applications will be open March 24-31; we’ll share more details in a future installment of this newsletter, so stay tuned.

As you’ve started to explore what it might look like to collaborate with an influencer in your community to promote, translate or add nuance to your outlet’s work, you’ve probably discussed questions and concerns with others in your newsroom. Some ethical questions may arise, such as, how do you know this information is fair and accurate? How might it impact people’s perception of the independence of your news organization?

It’s important to address these not only within your organization to get buy-in but with the public as well. When experimenting with new types of content — especially from creators or digital messengers — transparency is crucial.

Exploring these ethical questions will not only help you have more confidence in your collaboration and promote transparency with your community but will provide guideposts to choosing the right people to work with. It will also help you outline expectations and responsibilities for both the influencer and the news team working with them.   

Below are questions and a checklist to help you anticipate and prepare for any potentially sticky ethical situations arising from partnering with trusted messengers.

Exploring the ethics of an influencer collaboration

During your newsroom listening session, you may have encountered questions about how such a partnership will work within the editorial ethics built into your core newsroom operations. Make a list of those and as a team, answer some of the questions below to help determine what an influencer collaboration should look like for your organization and what issues you need to be transparent about with readers and colleagues alike.

• Does the influencer or messenger align with your organization’s values, goals and purpose?
• What questions might arise about your newsroom’s fairness or perspective if connected with this person? What assumptions might people make?
• If content from this collaboration is shared through a specific lens or perspective, are you comfortable with it being separate from but complementary to your own work? Will your audience be?
• How will you fact-check and make sure what is being shared is accurate? Can you agree to a joint commitment to accuracy and sharing of sources and source material?
• Are you open to the output of the collaboration looking different from your usual journalism? If so, are you communicating that to your staff and discussing any concerns?

Once you can answer those questions and decide how you plan to move forward with an influencer collaboration, follow this checklist to help build trust through transparency.

✅ Disclose the relationship and why you’re investing in the partnership

✅ Share the scope of the project

✅ Talk about who is financially backing the work if applicable

✅ Explain how the content is fact-checked

✅ Clarify the editing process

✅ Address potential conflicts of interest

✅ Highlight your organization’s ethics

You can find more questions, prompts and sample disclosures in this article written by Trusting News’ Mollie Muchna.

What others are doing

Members of the 2024 cohort navigated these ethical questions in real time as they built out partnerships with trusted messengers. As reflected in a madlib-style exercise from the cohort’s retrospective, several lessons learned point to the importance of ethical guardrails before any contract is signed:

When it comes to influencers, if I knew then that as long as our organization gave pretty clear boundaries on what our newsroom values are, I wouldn’t have worried so much on the influencer following them.

When it comes to influencers, if I knew then how important it was for the influencer to align with the purpose of your organization, I’d have conducted a more tailored search for the right influencer.

“Influencer partnerships go beyond transactional arrangements; they thrive on genuine alignment of values and goals,” Olivia Rivarola with Factchequeado wrote in a learning memo. “Take the time to build relationships with influencers who truly share your mission and are passionate about the issues you are addressing. This ensures that the partnership feels authentic both to the influencer and their audience, and it can result in more meaningful and impactful content.”

Dig deeper

A lot is being written right now about influencers — whether they’re called creators, news influencers, trusted messengers or something else. Here are some reports and breakdowns you may find helpful as you consider what ethical issues your newsroom needs to consider.

• ‘News influencers’ are racking up billions of views – and not checking their facts
• At Harvard, a model program aims to influence the influencers
• The future of trustworthy information: Learning from online content creators
• How influencers are impacting journalism

Mollie Muchna contributed to this newsletter installment.

+ COMING UP: How to map the influencer landscape in your community

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