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: Keep Them Coming Back For More
The New Yorker has created a pop-up on their site that asks readers if they want an email reminder to come back and finish reading later. It is a clever idea that recognizes how reading habits are shifting. The widget will be open sourced so local newsrooms can use it on their sites. How might you you iterate on this idea to better serve readers, and get them coming back for more? Would people want to be emailed when there is a follow up to the story? Would they like a notification when their neighborhood is mentioned in a story? Would they want to be reminded to download a podcast they stumbled on? 

Visual Storytelling for Newsrooms of All Sizes

The New Yorker’s animated cover of this week’s issue, a collaboration with This American Life, is a real gem, and it reminds us yet again of the power of visual storytelling. When you watch the animation, consider whether you would react differently to the story, or remember it differently had you only heard the audio, or had instead read it in a magazine or on a website. There are many ways to incorporate more visual storytelling into your work that are powerful and memorable, but don’t have to break the bank: 

• AJ+’s use of video is a great example – we especially liked this one for its simplicity and ability to be replicated by anyone. 
• Read why five publishers enhance their stories with original illustrations and get inspired to give it a try 
• Illustrator Mikey Burton says that in the battle for audience attention, illustrations can be publishers’ secret weapon. 
• Listen to ProPublica’s podcast on “The Evolution of Editorial Design and Visual Storytelling” 

Should Journalists Care About Empathy?

The NPR visuals team recently asked “Do Visual Stories Make People Care?” They have a great deep dive on lessons they have been learning by experimenting with something that is like a slideshow on steroids which they call “sequential visual stories.” On The Media interviewed NPR’s Brian Boyer about how we might measure empathy in our audience. If we want people to care about journalism – trust it, support it, share it – we need to do journalism that makes people care. But, On The Media asks, if we put too much emphasis on empathy, how will it change the kinds of stories we produce? On The Media looks at this question from many angles in its superb podcast.

• Do Visual Stories Make People Care? – NPR
• Feel This – On The Media
• In the aftermath of tragedy, lay the groundwork for Restorative Narrative – IVOH 
• The Need for Listening and Empathy in Journalism – Josh Stearns

Act Like You Mean It

Improv seems like an unlikely topic for a newsletter about local news, but a series of recent articles suggest that Improv can help us be more innovative and engaged. SUNY Stony Brook is using improv to help improve science communications. Science Friday reports that “students practice improv games geared towards helping young scientists read and understand their audience.” Amanda Hirch made a similar point in the Columbia Journalism Review last week, arguing that improv can be a training tool for community engagement in newsrooms. We aren’t suggesting local newsrooms should enroll in acting classes, but in the articles below there are a number of great lessons from acting you could apply to your work.

• What improv could teach newsrooms – Columbia Journalism Review 
• These Science Students Learn to Think on Their Feet – Science Friday 
• A Bootcamp in Listening Through Improv – WNYC’s Only Human 
• Improv, Storytelling and Dementia – This American Life 

Beyond Crowdfunding, Toward Sustainability 

In our journalism sustainability work in New Jersey we have been experimenting with crowdfunding as a catalyst that can help jumpstart other longer term revenue streams. Kevin Anderson, at the UK’s Media Briefing, talked with us about this strategy. But we are not alone, others are illustrating the potential for new kinds of creative community supported revenue models. Radviotopia, kings of media on Kickstarter, launched a fall fundraising campaign to ask people to become monthly donors instead of one-time contributors. The results were amazing. They got 19,500 donors, 82% of which signed on to give monthly on an ongoing basis. Local newsrooms can learn a lot from these efforts about how to launch and structure membership programs and leverage your fans to become supporters (even if it isn’t at the scale of these larger national projects).

• The Coin, the Quilt and the Superfan: Lessons from Radiotopia’s Fundraising Campaign – Radiotopia 
• Dutch news site De Correspondent has signed up 40,000 paid members – NiemanLab 
• How the Boston Globe is getting readers to pay a dollar a day for digital news – NiemanLab 
• What can regional publishers do to stimulate growth and sustainability? – The Media Briefing  

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.