As fires raged across parts of Los Angeles earlier this year, the Los Angeles Times’ coverage included live blogs, breaking news and resources to use in the moment.
Those resources didn’t stop being relevant when the moment passed.
“Wildfires aren't going away,” said Vanessa Franko, assistant editor for audience overseeing entertainment and arts. “Climate change is real. What can we do?”
One answer: Pull the resources gathered during a disaster into a free newsletter that walks people through what they need to know, as the title says, In Case of Fire.
This course-style newsletter is the second for the Times. Its first dealt with another natural disaster Californians need to be ready for: earthquakes.
The concept is pretty simple, Franko said.
“We’ve done all this work, let’s reframe it.”
Reporter Karen Garcia is the voice of In Case of Fire, which builds on the service journalism she helped create during the recent fires. She took her work, questions she saw from people on social media, stories, explainers and questions she and her colleagues had themselves, then structured each week of the newsletter around a specific topic.
“How do you help not just now but in the long term, and how do you provide information that’s actionable?” she asked. “You’re trying your best to give it a 360-degree look on one topic.”
Those topics include:
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How to prepare for evacuations
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How to stay safe in wildfire smoke
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What to know about returning and assessing damage
The newsletter is free to everyone and arrives once a week for several weeks. And it offers something more than just information.
“You can walk away from this newsletter and have agency in knowing that, one, you know what to do or you know where to find the resource to know what to do,” Garcia said, “and two, just knowing that you can also easily share it and spread that agency to your community. People are hungry for agency. They’re hungry to know what to do, and they’re hungry to know how they can help others.”
The really useful work journalists make during dire breaking news doesn’t have to go away, Franko said. It can have a longer life.
“This is a direct way that we can make people’s lives better,” Franko said.
If you have work that might fit well in a newsletter course, here’s what Franko and Garcia recommend:
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Keep it simple. “Make sure it’s concise,” Franko said.
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Make it easy to find again. “If you’re going back to try to find this content three months from now, what would you search for?” Franko said. “Make sure that’s in your newsletter.”
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Work with existing resources. Bring national, local and hyperlocal resources and organizations together in a way that matters to your audience, Garcia said.
Some other newsletter courses to explore:
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In a past job, Franko helped create Garden Party, a newsletter that helps people grow tomatoes.
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Check out The Wall Street Journal's six-week money challenge newsletter.
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The Washington Post’s A Better Week is a seven-day newsletter course that helps you “conquer your calendar, get more done and find time for the things you care about.”
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Last year, Poynter took my Work-Life Chemistry training and made it a newsletter course, which, of course, I highly recommend.
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