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: Make Room For Engagement
Last year Kelsey Proud, Digital Innovation Editor at St. Louis Public Radio, produced a great guide for building more community engagement into newsrooms. In this short post she highlights some of the report’s big takeaways. It focuses on everything from newsroom roles to key questions and meaningful metrics.

Friends Don’t Let Friends Use Bad Data  

We are really encouraged by the expanding list of tools and resources being created to help people learn data journalism and make simple data reporting tasks more accessible to newsrooms of all sizes. Specifically, we appreciate the commitment to openness and peer-to-peer support we see in the field around data journalism. This week the Knight Foundation announced the winners of their News Challenge content on data and networks, go check out these great projects. Here are some other resources worth bookmarking. 

• Quartz has created a guide to bad data, which they describe as “an exhaustive reference to problems seen in real-world data along with suggestions on how to resolve them.” 
• Databasic is a set of online tools for working with data specifically designed for people just learning about data. The project was created by faculty at the Emerson Engagement Lab and MIT. 
• The European Journalism Center’s Data Driven Journalism resource hub and related Data Journalism Handbook is chock full of lessons, tools and articles from basic to advanced. 
• Alex Howard’s report on the Art and Science of Data Journalism came out in 2014 but it is still a hugely valuable resource. 
   

Creating Simple But Powerful Visual Stories

In case you missed it, “The Best Online Journalism and Storytelling of 2015” by Local Fix contributor Josh Stearns and our pal Luis Gomez is a goldmine of inspiring, insightful, and creative stories. Definitely bookmark-worthy. And while you’re at it, bookmark this too: Curious City’s new interactive feature “If You Toured Chicago in 1910, What Would You Do?” It’s a clever look back in history, place and news as seen through the eyes of four different personas. Curious City has created a number of compelling interactives that don’t require extremely sophisticated tech skills (i.e. you can do this too!) and cover topics that are adaptable to your community.

• Field Guide for Chicago’s Hawks – smart use of images with sound overlays. 
• Where Does Your Poop Go? a kid-friendly guide (inspired by the 5 year old who asked the question) through the Chicago sewer system.
• What if the Great Chicago Fire of 1871 Never Happened? – a mash-up of illustrations, historical images and current photos.
• Six Tunnels Hidden Under Chicago’s Loop – there are amazing stories under your city.

New Guide to Email Newsletters for Newsrooms

Newsletters got a lot of attention in 2015, but we think there is still a lot of untapped potential for creativity, engagement and even revenue in newsletters. We’ll be looking at outside-of-the-box ideas for newsletters as well as best practices for newsrooms of different sizes in 2016. If you have big ideas about newsletters or examples you love, send them our way (just hit reply to this email). Here are a few good links about newsletters you might have missed. 

• The POLIS center for journalism and society released a terrific report on newsletters in newsrooms (PDF, HT @millie). 
• The power of the good old email newsletter (summary of the above report) – World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers 
• E-newsletters: still a ‘powerful medium’ for engagement – by Alistair Reid 
• What we learned from a week of prototyping a newsletter in public – by Millie Tran 

What You Need to Know About the FTC’s New Guidelines for Native Ads

Just before the end of 2015 the Federal Trade Commission issued new guidelines (PDF) on how native advertising is used and labeled. As more and more local newsrooms are experimenting with native ads, it is critical that they understand these new rules. The FTC’s guidelines are inspired in part by numerous studies that found most consumers “can’t tell native ads from editorial content.” Here are some key points to keep in mind, and where you can learn more: 

• “The more a native ad is similar in format and topic to content on the publisher’s site, the more likely that a disclosure will be necessary to prevent deception” – MediaLife has an overview of the new rules. 
• “When it comes to labelling, advertisers shouldn’t use terms such as ‘Promoted’ or ‘Promoted Stories,’ because they are ‘at best ambiguous and potentially could mislead consumers that advertising content is endorsed by a publisher site.’ – Mathew Ingram’s report on the new guidelines in Fortune.  
• “Only 30 percent of publishers are in compliance with the FTC’s new guidelines that address how ads are labeled.” DigiDay looks at some of the publishers that will need to change their labels.  

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.