Actual thing I saw on the way to the beach this summer. (Photo by my 12-year-old)

Oh my gosh hi! I missed you. 

My summer was volleyball tournaments and youth group retreats and driving my kids to all the places they had to go. It was a little bit sitting on the beach, a bit more of floating in the pool, a bucket-list trip with my mom, and, of course, a lot of work. 

Some of that work included figuring out what’s next for Local Edition. I’ve said this before, but I’ve been improvising for awhile now, and that’s fun/exhausting. So I took the summer off from this newsletter to plan what it should be next and then get to work on it.

The place my editors and I arrived at is this: We need a newsletter that shows what’s working in local news and breaks down how and why. 

Each week, I’ll bring you a short story on something cool from a local newsroom or local journalist along with their tips on how to do it yourself. I hope this breaks through the lack of time and resources I know so many journalists in local news face. And I hope you can copy/paste or use it as inspiration to do something similar in your newsroom. 

I’m also going to publish one guide each month based on the things I’m learning from other fantastic journalists in my role as a faculty member at Poynter. 

What do you think? Know any cool things/people I should talk with? Any specific guides you’d love to get your hands on?

Reply to this email and tell me what you're thinking. I'd also love to hear about your summer. 

Before we go, I want to share some things I've been collecting all summer:

• The American Press Institute built a remarkable resource guide on journalists and mental health. It is packed full of things you'll need in this job. Check it out.
• Want to hone your investigative skills? Poynter's Will Work for Impact: Fundamentals of Investigative Journalism, takes place in October with ProPublica's Alexandra Zayas. Here's more. 
• In July, we announced the new class of Poynter-Koch fellows. Allow me to introduce them. I'm really proud of the projects they produced in their fellowship. Particularly this one. 
• Also, it's not too late to sign up for Level Up, the six-week virtual course I teach with next-level skills and a phenomenal group of instructors. Join us!
• One more: Applications are now open for Google News Initiative Pre-launch Lab, "a program supporting early stage entrepreneurs in journalism." It includes live seminars and personalized coaching. Go apply! 

That’s it for me, thanks for having me back in your inbox,

Kristen