Welcome to the Local Fix. Each week we look at key debates in journalism sustainability and community engagement through the lens of local news.  But first, we always begin with one good idea…

One Good Idea: Learn From Your Mistakes
Scott Finn, executive director of West Virginia Public Broadcasting wrote recently, “We learn more from our mistakes. So why don’t we talk about them?” In Current last week Finn offers a useful reflection on why we should all be more open about our failures, and suggests some ways we could create more safe space to learn from our mistakes.

(Have we told you recently how great you are? This week’s newsletter includes a number of articles submitted by readers. Thanks for sharing the work you are doing, promoting the projects that inspire you, and being a part of this community.)

Local News Survival Stories

The last month has seen a surge of articles about the state of local and hyperlocal news. Taken together they paint a good picture of the complexity of how small local newsrooms are trying to reinvent their work around community and sustainability. It is a hard narrative to tell because it loos so different across each community. The unique mix of place and culture that shapes these small newsrooms means that scale is linked more to meeting community needs, not just growing exponentially. While every newsroom has to design its business model around its specific context, there are a lot of lessons here for longtime newspapers and new digital start-ups.

• Local independent news operations demonstrate staying power – by Michele McLellan 
• Publishing for Peanuts – A global study of successful journalism start-ups – By JJ Robinson, Kristen Grennan, Anya Schiffrin (PDF link)
• A diverse local news ecosystem is emerging, and it doesn’t need ‘scale’ or venture capital – by Matt DeRienzo 
• Grown from Patch: A crop of new hyperlocal news sites has sprung up from AOL’s failed platform – By Laura Hazard Owen  
• The Challenge for ‘Indie’ News Sites: Monetizing Highly Engaged Audiences – By Tom Grubisich 
   

Thinking Beyond Ad Blocking

When it comes to ads, the CEO of Mic says “We haven’t done banner ads or programmatic. We want high-quality, elegant advertising that works. It’s not interruptive, it’s beautiful.” Amidst the rising tide of ad blocking we are hearing more and more about making better ads. In Neiman Reports Celeste LeCompte looks at how some people are trying to make ads more valuable and relevant to readers. Anil Dash grapples with how to connect value-driven independent companies with indie publishers and creators, as has been happening in the podcasting world. Finally, in a must read over at the Harvard Business Review, Doc Searls describes the near-future of the web when readers and consumers have more power to shape their interactions with publishers and advertisers. 

• Ad Blockers and the Next Chapter of the Internet – by Doc Searls 
• To Fight Ad Blocking, Build Better Ads – by Celeste LeCompte 
• Future-proof sponsors & the ads we don’t hate – Anil Dash 
• Mic CEO Has High Hopes For Digital Publishing, Without Programmatic Ads – by Sarah Sluis

Journalism and Civics in an Age of Mistrust

Ethan Zuckerman’s writing and work at the MIT Center for Civic Media has had a huge influence on on the way we think about community news, information and engagement. This week we wanted to feature four posts from Ethan from the last five years.

• On business models, Facebook, and participatory versus traditional media – “Journalistic organizations, the way we’ve structured them—at least in the United States—are dual bottom line organizations: They need to be fiscally sustainable, and they need to have a civic impact.”
• Insurrectionist Civics in the Age of Mistrust – The changing shape of media over the past forty years has a role in the rise of mistrust as well. […] The ability for people to publish and debate online has given us the revelations from Wikileaks and from Edward Snowden. But we’ve also seen the rise of a culture where everything’s up for debate.”
• Beyond “The Crisis in Civics”: “Rather than concluding that civics is in crisis, it’s worth considering that the practice of civics may be changing shape. […] We need to understand the new shapes civics is taking so we can teach people to engage in ways that allow them to effectively assert agency, to bring about the changes, large and small, they want to see in the world.”
• Metrics for civic impacts of journalism – “Reporting on local civic issues offers the possibility of connecting people to opportunities for action in their own communities.

Raiders of the Lost Web

Where does good journalism go to die? On the web it slips away all too quickly between the cracks of dead links and old servers. Two of the stories below highlight the challenge of preserving digital journalism and accessing our shared history in print. Archives aren’t just important for their historical value, they are also deeply entwined with the culture of a place. The Columbia Journalism Review looks at how local newsrooms are leveraging their photo archives to engage readers. 

• Raiders of the Lost Web: If a Pulitzer-finalist 34-part series of investigative journalism can vanish from the web, anything can. – by Adrienne LaFrance
• Copyright Terms And How Historical Journalism Is Disappearing. – by Parker Higgins
• How two local newsrooms are using photo archives to connect with readers. – by Susannah Nesmith  

Have a good weekend,
Molly and Josh 

The Local Fix is a project of the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation’s Local News Lab, a website where we are exploring creative experiments in journalism sustainability.