One Good Idea: Building Trust with Audiences is Like Dating
If you want a better relationship, there are a few ground rules to follow, Joy Mayer points out in a post based on The Trusting News Project. Go ahead, swipe right on these ideas.

In honor of International Women’s Day this week, we want to know – who are the women working in local journalism you admire and that more people should know about? Email responses to localnewslab@democracyfund.org, or tweet them to @thelocalnewslab, and we’ll feature your responses next week. Don’t limit yourself to reporters- we want to know who’s doing great work in business, marketing, editing, and more. Here’s some inspiration:

Mobile technologies and tools aren’t only for large media organizations. We’ve gathered a few useful examples, tools, and tips in the links below that will give you ideas and ways to try some new experiments, no matter your size.

What happens when competitors band together to grow their audience? The TryPod initiative is giving it a try to raise awareness and listeners of podcasts. Dozens of producers, from NPR to Earwolf to small independents, are using a hashtag, podcast promos, videos, and more to get more people listening to podcasts. The collaboration makes us wonder what other “tell a friend” campaigns local news organizations could try out in their regions with competitors.

Our new site is full of practical advice, tools and tips. This week, we recommend this crosspost from Sabrina Hersi Issa, a Senior Advisor to the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation, on media diversity, setting goals without data, and doing measurement without action. 

Send us your feedback and ideas for other resources that you would find useful on the Lab at localnewslab@democracyfund.org.

Have a good weekend
Josh and Teresa
@jcstearns, @gteresa

The Local Fix is a project of the Democracy Fund’s Public Square Program, which invests in innovations and institutions that are reinventing local media and expanding the public square. Disclosure: Some projects mentioned in this newsletter may be funded by Democracy Fund, you can find a full list of the organizations we support on our website.