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: Shake Up Your Story Structure
This week we stumbled on a wonderful Pinterest board curated by Upworthy’s Amy O’Leary. O’Leary is curating illustrated examples of story structure, capturing a huge array of ways that people think about presenting news and information. The board is full of ideas, inspiration and advice you could build on in your newsroom. In a similar vein, NPR’s editorial training site featured four drawings by Planet Money’s Robert Smith that help understand different kinds of stories.

Getting People to Pay for News

This week Blendle — which has been called an iTunes for news — launched in the US after a successful getting off the ground internationally. Right now Blendle doesn’t include any local newsrooms, but on Twitter the founder suggested that he is eager to begin working with regional and local publishers as they expand. However, getting people to pay for the news will take more than a new app. Below is a round-up of some other recent posts debating how we might continue to build a community that will help support local news:

• Tallying the Many Ways Publishers Earn Online Revenue – Publishing Executive 
• ‘Paywall’ to ‘Membership’ Will Require a Massive Culture Shift for Newspapers – Editor and Publisher 
• What it Will Take to Get People to Pay for News – Local News Lab 
• Travel Host Rick Steves Describes a Business Model Based on Generosity – Current 

Connecting Oral Storytelling and Journalism

This week, we turn to the Coloradan’s Storytellers Project, which is “dedicated to the idea that oral storytelling and journalism have the same goals: serving and reflecting a community while fostering empathy.” The Coloradan has now hosted three of these events, inviting community members to share first-person stories around a particular theme, most recently “home.” This event, on the heels of the Coloradan staff dedicating a day to meeting with people in coffee shops around Fort Collins, reinforces the paper’s commitment to deepening relationships in the community, which in turn builds trust and civic participation. It also gives the paper opportunities to meet new people, hear feedback and get new story ideas. The Storytellers Project is a Gannett initiative, originally launched in Arizona and now includes nine cities in the US with 65 events planned for 2016. We would love to hear from Gannett staff and community members alike about how these in-person events are shaping coverage of their communities.

Mining Media Metrics for Meaning

Our friends over at Mediashift recently launched a new site dedicated to questions of how journalists measure their impact and use metrics. While the tools newsrooms have to collect data about how people are consuming their stories are expanding rapidly, we still grapple to deeply understand the long terms impact our work is having on residents, communities, and democracy. Balancing the weight we give real-time data with the importance of long term impact is an ongoing debate, but one that has real consequences for how we allocate resources and serve communities. 

• People Matter More Than Metrics at Kentucky Center for Investigative Reporting – Mediashift 
• What’s Next for Media Impact? Lessons from Dissection – Center for Investigative Reporting 
• Map Your Metrics to your Goals – Mediashift 

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.