The Case for the Impact & Trust Platform
It’s not about awards. It’s not about anecdotes. It’s about proving value every single day.
I’ve seen newsrooms pitch a funder on a trophy case and a single shiny anecdote. The funder smiled politely, but the case wasn’t landing. Awards and stories aren’t enough anymore.
If 2025 has taught us anything, it’s that the strongest argument you can make for funding your journalism isn’t a glossy annual report. It’s the process you use every day.
Funders and communities aren’t buying promises anymore. They want to see that your journalism is built for trust and designed for impact. And proving that takes a new kind of tool—one that can help steer the newsroom and give the development team the data it needs to back it up.
Why traffic analytics aren’t enough
You might be thinking, “But we already have Chartbeat, Parse.ly, Adobe or Google.” And you’re right—those tools are great at showing traffic. They’ll tell you who clicked and how long they stuck around. But none of them were built to measure mission.
Here’s how I think about it: commercial analytics are the speedometer and gas gauge. They tell you how fast you’re moving and how much fuel you’ve got left. The Impact & Trust Platform is the compass and GPS—it makes sure you’re actually heading where you need to go.
This isn’t another traffic dashboard. It’s a value dashboard that answers what others can’t:
Was this journalism trustworthy and representative?
Did this journalism have a meaningful impact on our audience?
Why API built this
That’s why we built the Impact & Trust Platform at the American Press Institute.
API isn’t a startup trying to push licenses. We’re an 80-year-old nonprofit built to support journalists and strengthen democracy. Most of us came out of newsrooms—we’ve done the jobs, faced the pressure, and made the same arguments to boards and funders.
We’re not here to hand you another tool for the sake of it. We’re here to give you a framework for survival, one that shows why your journalism is both trusted and consequential.
Trust, proven with Source Matters
To prove credibility, show that your work reflects your community’s voices. Source Matters automates that. It uses natural language processing to identify quoted sources so you can track diversity by race, gender, expertise, or any category you define.
Custom dashboards help you spot patterns, set goals, and demonstrate how representation builds trust.
Impact, proven with Metrics for News
Metrics for News doesn’t stop at pageviews. It pulls together multiple signals into one clear engagement score and uses AI to spot which stories, formats, and topics build loyalty over time.
It connects your work to outcomes like sign-ups, donations, and subscriptions—the lifelines of sustainability. And for reporters and editors, it isn’t busywork. It’s direct, useful feedback that shows whether your journalism is making the difference you came here to make.
More than technology
Put them together and you have the Impact & Trust Platform. Think of it as the data expert your newsroom never had—or the one you can’t afford anymore. It delivers the kind of analysis a full-time researcher would cost $70,000–$100,000 a year to provide.
But this is more than technology. It’s a partnership. The platform comes with coaching and monthly Newsroom Huddles—live, working sessions where you swap lessons with peers and learn alongside API’s team.
We don’t drop off a dashboard and wish you luck. We help you build a culture of impact.
The one-two punch
Here’s the bottom line. In any funding conversation, you need two things:
Credibility — proof your journalism reflects the voices of your community.
Consequence — proof it changes awareness, engagement, and loyalty.
That’s the one-two punch. And it’s the case we should be making every single day, not waiting until the annual report.
Why I believe in this
I’m sharing this because I believe in it. I’ve led teams at Philly.com, NBCUniversal and helped build https://www.LehighValleyNews.com from the ground up. Proving value is hard. This is the platform I wish we’d had—a straightforward way to connect daily journalism to trust and impact.
Because we’re a mission-driven nonprofit, our incentives are different. No sales quota. A strategy team focused on helping newsrooms thrive.
If you’re open to a strategic conversation about your goals and challenges, reach out. No pitch. A working session to see whether this framework can help.
Yoni Greenbaum
yoni.greenbaum@pressinstitute.org
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