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My kids finished school last week and spent the weekend welcoming summer (with a lot of help from their dad and me). There was swimming, beaches, barbecue, popsicles, day movies, some naps and barely any laundry. (That will catch up with us.)
And when I woke up yesterday morning, it felt really good to know that our daily morning hustle was, for a few months, over. For kids, summer is a great time to rest and play.
For me and Local Edition, it’s a great time to pause and plan.
So, this will be the last Local Edition of the summer. We’ll return in September.
Pausing publication, even with a little newsletter like this one, feels strange. But, between us, I’ve been struggling with the direction of Local Edition for the last year. Now that I’m in a faculty role at Poynter, it’s hard to find the time to think past the week ahead. I’m grateful for the example a few publications have given our industry about the power of the pause.
In 2021, the nonprofit newsroom The Objective took a summer break ([link removed]) to refocus. In 2020, this student publication took a week break ([link removed]) .
Whether it’s for strategy or sanity, I’ve always viewed those announcements with a lot of admiration. In a 24-hour-feed-the-beast-keep-the-hamster-wheel-turning-no-matter-what media world, taking a break feels a little bit radical.
So, I’m going to be a little bit radical and follow their example.
Because it’s summer, I want to leave you with some summer reading from our archives and share a few upcoming opportunities.
* Want to bring feature obits back to your newsroom? You can check out my own obits experiment here ([link removed]) . Last week was the final edition ([link removed]) of How They Lived, my obits newsletter for the Tampa Bay Times, but I’m still writing them ([link removed]) each week and was happy to be part of this recent conversation ([link removed]) on the craft itself.
* This summer, freelance journalist Omar Gallaga is writing about some of the remarkable projects that came out of the 2022-2023 Poynter-Koch Media and Journalism Fellowship class. The first is about the mutual aid network ([link removed]) that journalist Kati Kokal built to help journalists after a layoff. Upcoming stories include a guide for journalists who are introverts, a story about how to make your own city guide and a look at the work of one journalist who is working to make the victims of violent crimes more than a number. You’ll find those stories here ([link removed]) .
* Level Up, a six-week virtual course I teach for local reporters, will return this fall with a fantastic group of experts, including investigative journalist Cheryl W. Thompson from NPR, the Wall Street Journal’s Erin Ailworth on trauma-informed reporting and editor/writing coach Maria Carrillo on narrative storytelling. You can find out more here ([link removed]) .
* On June 8 and June 15, tune into Beat Academy for two weeks of training to help you better “Understand U.S. Immigration From the Border to the Heartland.” ([link removed])



Ok, that’s it for me. I will see you in September!
Kristen
Kristen Hare
Faculty
The Poynter Institute
@kristenhare ([link removed])

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