April 14, 2017
Local Fix: Community Verification, Winning, Experiment Time
If you’ve been thinking about launching a newsletter, or need some help with one you already have, this upcoming webinar from Mediashift will help you learn some best practices to design, launch, and measure it. For some more tips, don’t miss our newsletter guide on the Local News Lab.
A Little Help From My Friends (and Audience)
- The Washington Post wants your help to cover (and fact-check) congressional town halls – NiemanLab
- Le Monde is using Snapchat Discover to teach fake-news spotting – Digiday
- David Fahrenthold goes from tweeting pictures of his notepad to winning a Pulitzer Prize – NiemanLab
- Facebook Wants To Teach You How To Spot Fake News On Facebook – BuzzFeed
Celebrating Local Wins
Live shot of @PulitzerPrize announcement w @thomas_peele @daviddebolt @e_baldi; nice shot @Tyska pic.twitter.com/Dm7DWaijY8
— Matthias Gafni (@mgafni) April 10, 2017
Several Pulitzer Prize winners this week showcased the need and importance of local news. Since we’re often surrounded by doom and gloom, we think it’s important to celebrate and appreciate the high points, too. Here are a few of our favorite articles about local winners from this week:
- The journalist who won the Charleston Gazette-Mail’s first Pulitzer still does a monthly night cops shift – Poynter
- Tiny, family-run newspaper wins Pulitzer Prize for taking on big business – Poynter
- New York City passes nuisance abatement reforms after ProPublica/NYDailyNews investigation – ProPublica
- “When you can show somebody’s experiences you can create a bridge of understanding.” – Chicago Tribune
- Editorial: Our work on Ghost Ship has just begun – East Bay Times
Time for Some Experiments
- “A Sea Change” — a theatrical performance focused on climate change and rising seas – Eyes on the Rise
- I am a Black Girl in Pittsburgh series pairs storytelling with a new fellowship – Public Source
- A visualization of the words spoken during arrests in Boston – Boston Globe
- What the Coloradoan staff is learning while experimenting with bots – RJI
- Mexico’s Pictoline engages audiences by explaining complex issues with intelligent, fun graphic communication – Knight Center for Journalism in the Americas
Have a good weekend,
Josh and Teresa
@jcstearns, @gteresa
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.
