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: Human Powered Data Visualizations
The Huffington Post created a compelling video charting people’s opinions about hot-button issues, but instead of fancy web graphics they used real people moving around in physical space to map the responses to key questions. It is really effective and we could see local news organizations easily copying this idea using big public spaces like school gyms and local parks. We love the idea of combining data visualization and community engagement. 

Creative Storytelling: Six Very Different Examples

The New York Times is one of only a handful of newsrooms which has the resources for a visually stunning story like Greenland is Melting Away, but it’s a reminder that we can all find inspiration and ideas from creative storytelling even on a limited budget. How might you incorporate more photos and maps into your work, for example? Especially for local journalism, where a shared sense of place is at the heart of your work, maps are a powerful storytelling tool. Or, which artists might you collaborate with to tell more compelling stories?

In “Tapered Throne,” Brandon Tauszik takes something simple that we all know – the GIF – and turns them into powerful photojournalism by layering them into his story of black barbershops in Oakland. Notice too the unusually spare and elegant story design. Storybench has a behind the scenes look at how he did it, and Giphy has a new tool for making GIFs. Here are five other creative storytelling examples for you to save to your inspiration file and revisit when you need to – from the very sophisticated and expensive, to the very clever and resourceful:

• Greenland is Melting Away – by Coral Davenport, Josh Haner, Larry Buchanan, and Derek Watkins  
• The Dragon of the Alps: Johann Jakob Scheuchzer’s Scientific Quest for Evidence – by Anindita Basu Sempere  
• The Box: a Graphic Novel and video – by the Center for Investigative Reporting 
• The Drone Papers – by The Intercept  
• America’s Most Admired Lawbreaker – by Steven Brill 
   

Under the Hood: How Websites Work

Every once in awhile — like when we are showing our kids something online — we are reminded that the web is magic. Except that it is not. It is built piece by piece, code by code, detail by detail — and for many of us we only see an inch deep into how the web works. This week we are sharing a few links that help us think not only about the journalism on the page but also the code behind it, and how some newsrooms are trying to address big issues in how their websites work. 

• One of the best resources out there for “Journalism code and the people who make it” –  Knight-Mozilla OpenNews’ Source 
• Washington Post launched a new engineering blog and hosted a developer day
• Need for speed: Newspaper load times give ‘slow news day’ new meaning (Part One and Part Two)- by Barrett Golding 
• Time’s bounce rate down 15 percentage points since adopting continuous scroll – by Sam Kirkland 
   

Towards a Journalism of Discovery: Asking New Questions

Last month we launched a new experiment in collaborative community-driven reporting with three local newsrooms in New Jersey who are using Hearken to collect questions from their readers. Why are questions such a powerful tool for building engagement with communities and finding powerful new stories in our neighborhoods? One answer comes from the Atlantic’s Matt Thompson, who earlier this year gave a talk about the power of discovery in journalism. Josh wrote about that idea, and how local newsrooms can open up the reporting process, at Mediashift this week. Here are a few other different takes on asking questions and listening deeply. 

• Listening is a Revolutionary Act (Part One and Part Two) – Jesse Hardman   
• Relearning the Art of Asking Questions – by Tom Pohlmann and Neethi Mary Thomas 
• Laura Olin’s Everything Changes newsletter hosted a community advice exchange on Google Docs
• Listen up for better community engagement – by Amy Gahran 
   

Horizontal Loyalty: Learning From Others 

In 2011 RadioLab’s Robert  Krulwich gave a commencement speech at the UC Berkley journalism school, encouraging the students to not wait, to jump in and to “think about turning to people you already know, who are your friends, or friends of their friends and making something that makes sense to you together, that is as beautiful or as true as you can make it.” That idea – which he called “horizontal loyalty” – speaks to so much of what we see in local news. We are consistently amazed by the generosity of people working in local news to share what they are learning. Below are a few good profiles of local news organizations with a lot of lessons for others to draw on. 

• A Technical Guide Won’t Teach You What We Learned Starting a Radio Station – by Daphne Stanford 
• 5 lessons I’ve learned in my first year running a hyperlocal website – by Niall Norbury 
• How a local startup in Charlotte, North Carolina thinks it can make online advertising work – by Joseph Lichterman (See also How Charlotte suddenly became home to 2 millennial-targeted digital start-ups by Rick Edmonds)
• A conversation on local news sustainability on the New Haven Independent’s 10 year anniversary – by Paul Bass 

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.