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: ‘Tis the Season for Cliches
Oh, the weather outside is frightful, but the holiday cliches are (apparently) not so delightful. We don’t mean to be Scrooges, but if you’re working on your holiday stories this week, theseresources about what cliches and puns to watch out for are useful. (We may get some coal this year judging by the cliches we use in this newsletter, though.) 

Four Fundraising Lessons from NewsMatch

For ten more days – until midnight December 31 – NewsMatch is doubling donations to 110 local and investigative nonprofit newsrooms. Please spread the word, encourage others to give, and find a few newsrooms you want to support at NewsMatch.org. A series of recent articles shine a spotlight on the creative ways nonprofit newsrooms are expanding their donor base and encouraging more people to support quality news. Below are four examples, with tips and ideas you can build on for your own fundraising:

• To make fundraising appeals more appealing, Mother Jones turns them into stories readers want to read – NiemanLab 
• Selling local news, with the help of The Boss and ‘Hamilton’ – Poynter 
• Journalism’s New Patrons: VTDigger leads local investigative nonprofits – Columbia Journalism Review 
• Q&A: Architect of San Diego news nonprofit on recruiting wealthy contributors – Columbia Journalism Review  

Making a List, Checking it Twice…

How about a best of list of the best of lists to round out 2017? We’ve compiled just a few of the lists we will be diving into over the holidays. From people-powered projects to innovative collaborations to impactful investigations, it was a remarkable year of journalism. What other lists are we missing?

• 45 of the most innovative, immersive pieces of journalism in 2017 – Josh Stearns 
• The most engaging news stories of 2017 according to Chartbeat  – Chartbeat
• The best of the 1,000+ public-powered stories published in the past year – Hearken
• CJR’s 2017 Journalism Awards – Columbia Journalism Review
• Top 6 Journalism Collaborations – MediaShift
• The 50 Best Podcasts of 2017 – The Atlantic

Take a Break

Judging by the number of out-of-office messages we know we’ll get from this newsletter, many of you are taking a few days off. We’ve compiled some useful resources for ways to *really* take a break when on vacation, and also how to take care of yourself and your coworkers during work, too. Take some inspiration from ICIJ and others, and spend some quality self-care time with a puppy, go upstate, watch a great show, and get off your phone. You deserve it.

• Resources on Self-Care & Peer Support– Dart Center
• 3 Ways to Control Your Phone Addiction on Vacation -Harvard Business Review
• Surviving the News Business – Burnout, self-care, and human-tested tactics for staying okay at work – Source
• What ICIJ is reading (and watching) this holiday season – ICIJ
• Why journalist Amy O’Leary is joining Headspace, a company that makes a meditation app – Amy O’Leary

Happy holidays,
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.