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: Sometimes the world just needs a good raccoon story
The country followed along with rapt attention on Tuesday as a raccoon scaled a building in downtown Minneapolis. The rogue mammal found itself in a precarious position as it made a 25-story ascent. After Minnesota Public Radio picked up the story, the hashtag #MPRraccoon was created. After that, it went viral. From The New York Times to FOX News to The Guardian, the raccoon’s plight was on the minds of many. There was even a local livestream of the harrowing climb, which concluded with a meal and a safe release. This story clearly struck a chord with readers and it’s been fun to see how Minnesota Public Radio leveraged the story served that audience curiosity. They collected raccoon fan art, they made a raccoon playlist, they even have raccoon t-shirts as a new member benefit. Think about how you might leverage a bizarre and wonderful local event to bring your community together around your work. 

🚨 Can you help the Fix? We try each week to bring you actionable intelligence that you can put to use. If you think the Local Fix is helpful, can you help us out? Please forward this on to your colleagues, or share with your networks and encourage others to subscribe at tinyletter.com/localfix. Thanks! 👍🏽

Helping More People Start and Sustain Local Newsrooms

The Institute for Nonprofit News and the Local Independent Online News Publishers are both meeting this week in Orlando alongside the Investigative Reporters and Editors conference. So far, one clear story is emerging: They are both growing. More and more people are starting up nonprofit and for-profit local news organizations around the country. Fittingly, this week the News Revenue Hub and the Shorenstein Center at Harvard released a new DIY guide for creating a local news start-up. Below is a link to that guide and a bunch of other resources on local news entrepreneurship. A lot of these links are useful for anyone pursuing new ideas or entrepreneurial projects inside existing newsrooms, too. 

• A definitive playbook: How to DIY a local nonprofit news outlet – NiemanLab 
• Announcing a new journalism entrepreneurship boot camp and a journalism innovation and entrepreneurship reading list. – Phillip Smith 
• The 100-day-plan and tips for keeping your news startup on target – INN 
• Betting on the success of local journalism – Columbia Journalism Review 
• Jeremy Caplan’s Curated Resources for Entrepreneurial Journalism – Jeremy Caplan

A Deeper Look at Guns

The topics of gun violence, mass shootings and the politics surrounding it have led to heated debates in communities nationwide, and it can make coverage a challenge. Beyond reporting the news of the day on gun violence, many places are collaborating to take a deeper look at the issues surrounding it. WAMU announced in March that it is launching a 10-station collaboration to create deep coverage on guns in America, especially on underreported topics and perspectives. Similar collaborations have taken flight, including a project headed by Spaceship Media that is pulling in local support from AL.com, Cleveland.com and others. Projects like WAMU and Spaceship add to a growing list of efforts like The Trace and ProPublica to closely examine gun violence as a whole. These efforts are highly collaborative, which allows them to take a deeper look, to pull in underreported voices and ideas, and to add much needed nuance to the topic.

• Guns and America: A Public Media Collaboration – WAMU
• Guns, an American Conversation – Spaceship Media
• Homicide and mass shooting (resource) – DART
• Taking a cue from ProPublica, The Trace is partnering with local TV stations to report major gun stories – NiemanLab
• A gun-focused news outlet on what it takes to cover firearms credibly – Columbia Journalism Review

So Much To Read (That’s Why We Are Here)

This was one of those weeks when we were reminded why we started this newsletter in the first place. The Local Fix was founded (4 years ago!) to help sort through all the noise about the future of journalism and hone in on a few key things that would be useful and delightful for busy folks in local newsrooms. Over the last seven days there has been a flood of research released. We wanted to take a minute and sort through it all so you can decide where to spend your time and go seeking out new ideas and inspiration. 

• Americans and the News Media: What they do — and don’t — understand about each other. This report from the American Press Institute is a good reality check about the gaps in understanding between newsrooms and communities and what we might do to bridge them. It also highlights some places of shared values that we can build on to strengthen trust. “The bottom line: The public is ready for a relationship with more understanding and trust, if news media can take the right steps to earn it.” – American Press Institute 
• Reuters 2018 Digital News Report – This massive overview of global trends is a good macro look at how digital news is being consumed and distributed (less platforms, more private messaging). Change is in the air, the authors write, but “these changes are fragile, unevenly distributed, and come on top of many years of digital disruption, which has undermined confidence of both publishers and consumers.” 
• Platforms, publishers, and the uneasy alliance at the heart of journalism. This new chapter in ongoing research from the Tow Center for Digital Journalism provides a deep look into newsroom social media strategies and the tensions that animate publisher/platform relationships. “Technology platforms that host, monetize, and distribute news are attempting a ‘pivot to civics,’ pushing them further into the traditional territory of news publishers as they provide more direct support for journalism and develop larger teams of editors and moderators to shape content.” 
• State of Newspapers and State of Digital News Fact Sheets – Finally, Pew Research Center has just updated their fact sheets on audience, revenue, technology, and more for newspapers and digital news in the US. 

Have a good weekend,
Josh, Teresa and Rachel
@jcstearns, @gteresa, @rachelannwegner

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.