Social beats TV: Technical.ly joins API cohort to rewire how news travels

How people get information is rapidly changing, and news organizations shouldn’t gatekeep. We should partner. 

More Americans are getting their news from social media than TV? Yeah, that happened. People are increasingly turning to AI chatbots to fact-check and seek relevant info? Ok, got it. 

If journalists’ goal is to inform our communities, let’s not waste time complaining about these shifts. Instead, we can increasingly think of our reporting as a “wire service” for these information delivery methods.

Finding best practices for how this actually works is something our newsroom’s been testing for a while. Now we’re going deeper: Technical.ly’s been selected to join the American Press Institute’s 2025 Influencers Learning Cohort. Alongside 15 other news orgs, and with support from the American Press Institute (API) team, we’ll experiment with ways to serve our audiences by partnering with social creators and trusted messengers.

Reporters will always be necessary. Someone needs to put new, factual, unique information on the internet in the first place.

We’re not replacing journalists. Reporters will always be necessary. Someone needs to put new, factual, unique information on the internet in the first place. But if people find it more convenient or enjoyable to get that information on their fave social platforms, we shouldn’t try to stop them.

Even before the Reuters Institute’s “social > TV” research dropped last week, it was clear significant percentages of Americans get news from TikTok, Instagram, YouTube and other apps. And it’s not just young people: Nearly 55% of adults of any age regularly get news this way, per Pew Research from last September.

The question is pretty simple, according to Samantha Ragland, API’s vice president of journalism strategy: “How might newsrooms be part of that ecosystem without trying to control it?”

Sliding into the feed with facts

Technical.ly already has a creator-in-residence program that brings diverse voices into our coverage of tech and entrepreneurship in local communities (shoutout TaTa Sherise!).

We’ve also been exploring partnerships to translate our immigration reporting — work supported by the WES Assefa Fund — as language access also helps ensure information reaches everyone who needs it.

Social media allows misinformation to spread. Even when not deliberately manipulated, platform algorithms can amplify lies. Combine that with the proliferation of un-vetted AI, the pre-internet allure of sensational information, and news org paywalls keeping key details out of reach, and you have a cocktail ripe for ethical issues. 

In a profession where ethics are the rule, we’re hyper-aware of this minefield. 

It’s why we want to be there too, sharing free and accessible info on bipartisan-backed entrepreneurship, jobs of the future and the impact of AI and emerging tech on local communities.  

Ethics is also our topic focus for the API project. We’re planning to collaborate with creators who can help us tell stories about entrepreneurship ethics in engaging, shareable video formats. We want to show startup culture isn’t all tech bros in Silicon Valley. Entrepreneurs live everywhere and wrestle with unique ethical issues that affect their families, employees and communities.

Our goal is to create videos that spark conversation and get shared widely — and we’re still looking for the right creator partners. We need influencers who care about local economies and can make their audiences care too. People who can take business and tech stories and make them resonate in 30- to 90-second videos.

As news consumption habits shift, journalists should slide our work right into where people already are. Social media isn’t about driving traffic: It’s about brand awareness, community engagement and ensuring info reaches people however they prefer to consume it.

If you’re a creator interested in collabing on stories about entrepreneurship, innovation and the ethical questions facing business leaders in our communities, give us a shout: info@technical.ly. 

Help us experiment with new ways to keep cities informed about the forces shaping their local economies. Because our mission remains the same. The delivery method is what’s evolving. News orgs must evolve with it.