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: Use Serial Stories to Boost Subscribers
When the L.A. Times published their six-part series, Framed, earlier this month they used creative design and clever distribution to boost newsletter subscriptions by 50,000. Poynter’s Kristin Hare has a good look at how they created feedback loops between their site and their newsletter and kept people coming back for more. 

Lessons Learned from a Decade of Community Engagement

Last month Poynter held a summit in New York City marking the 10 year anniversary of CNN’s iReport citizen journalism platform. The event looked back at the last decade of user participation in journalism and featured a number of great talks. I’ve linked to two pieces from speakers at the summit. Below are also two stories from the Columbia Journalism Review with concrete advice and ideas for how newsrooms are building and serving their audiences through engagement. 

• Comments are changing. Our commitment to audiences shouldn’t – Amanda Zamora 
• What we mean when we talk about “Engagement” – Jennifer Brandel 
• How Chalkbeat is trying to build a bigger audience for education news – Lauren Steussy 
• Texas Tribune continues to reach beyond political insiders – Tamar Wilner 

Rethinking Political Reporting as the Election Approaches

The election is less than two months away and while the national press has their eyes on one race in particular, around the country local newsrooms are working overtime to cover local candidates. Here is some good advice and creative ideas from both local and national journalists that you could steal and try in your newsroom between now and election day. 

• Lessons gleaned from 30 years of covering American politics—from Bill Clinton to Donald Trump – Ron Fournier 
• How one Washington Post reporter uses pen and paper to make his tracking of Trump get noticed – Ricardo Bilton 
• #MakeAlCare: How KPCC took on voter apathy one person at a time – Meghan McCarty 
• Five ways to cover the election from the ground up – Joellen Easton  

Legal Tips and Resources From Shield Laws to Copyright 

The campaign trail can be a tough place for reporters, especially this year. The Reporters Committee for Freedom of Press is tracking and supporting journalists who face press suppression while reporting on the election this year. Read about their new effort, one journalists’ recent arrest as well as copyright issues in online video and Shield Law protections below. 

• Reporters Committee to track interference with news media on the presidential campaign trail – RCFP  
• A reporter’s guide to getting arrested – Adam Regusea 
• Copyright tips to remember when producing online videos –  Arnau Vila 
• Shield laws and journalist’s privilege: The basics every reporter should know – Jonathan Peters 

Designing Journalism for Conversation

I’m at the Online News Association conference this week (if you are too, come say and yesterday I moderated a session with Monica Guzman and Terry Parris Jr on how we can build creative and critical conversations into our journalism before, during and after the reporting process. You can see all the case studies, tools and resources we mentioned in the session at: bit.ly/ona16conversation. Here is a round-up of a few of those links:

• From Chat Apps to Town Halls: Why More Newsrooms are Designing Journalism for Conversation – Me 
• Make the News a Conversation – Monica Guzman 
• 5 Things We Learned Collecting 3,352 Stories About Agent Orange Exposure – Terry Parris Jr. 

Have a good weekend,
Josh

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.