Last Friday, I was half way through my first cup of coffee when the calendar on my phone pinged with a reminder. 

It read: Career day.

You know that wave of dread that washes over you when you’ve forgotten something important? Yeah, it hit hard. It was my 4th grader’s career day. I speak every year. I’m almost always the only mom. I’ve learned to bring notebooks, have them make “press passes” or write their own stories thanks to the one year I followed the dad who was a manager at Sonic and brought everyone fries. 

But Friday, I totally forgot. And I had to go on, virtually, at 8:15 a.m. My daughter and I had discussed what I’d talk about this year, so I scrapped my slides together quickly while my husband got her ready. I dropped her off at school, and by 8:15, I was signed into her Microsoft Teams class, showing photos and telling stories about all the cool places I’ve gotten to visit as a journalist. 

I didn’t plan to travel the world with this job, I told them. But getting to meet people from different places and understand how they see the world has made my life and my work so much better. 

I was still thinking about that after a weekend collecting front pages from the U.S. and beyond during our 2020 election-palooza. And I started to wonder – what does this election look like to journalists in other countries? What advice might they offer us? What news takes up all the oxygen where they are?

You can see all their answers today in a piece over at Poynter. But I saved this part for you. In addition to several other questions, I asked journalists from Brazil, Turkey, Canada, Poland and Kenya if there was anything they wanted local journalists in the U.S. to know. 

Here’s what they said.

They’re taking notes:

“We are watching closely the elections and the coverage,” said Patrícia Campos Mello, a reporter at large and columnist at the Brazilian newspaper Folha de São Paulo. “And we are anticipating that our president will use the same disinformation campaigns about fraud in the elections on our 2022 presidential elections.”

Stick to what works:

“Journalists in Kenya and other African countries in Africa look up to colleagues in the U.S.,” said Caroline Jerotich Kimutai, the managing editor for digital at The Standard in Kenya. “They should stick to the ethos of journalism — accuracy and objectivity!”

Make it hyper-local, but global:

“Focusing on hyper-local content from a global perspective rather than getting caught up in the national agenda is, in my opinion, an important strategy for the local press,” said Sarphan Uzunoğlu, who teaches college journalism and is the head of NewsLabTurkey.org, a digital journalism academy in Turkey. “Stories like global warming or youth unemployment are everywhere, and they are far more important than the political debate of white-haired men over 70.”

You hold the key:

“I think local journalism is much more important than mainstream journalism as on this lower level we figure out the connection of big issues with everyday life,” said Jakub Górnicki, CEO and co-founder of Outriders, a digital news site in Poland. “With current polarization and ‘ideological war’ most mainstream media seem very disconnected from their audiences. I would not take the rise of subscribers as a sign that the media listen better. For many who donate to the media it's like paying soldiers of fortune. And also though Joe Biden won it seems that everybody again got the whole situation wrong - there is a bigger society change happening fueled by the uncertainty of pandemic. Local media hold the key to listening to audiences which are smaller and simply easier to understand for reporters. All who analyze membership or subscription should pay attention to local media who successfully rebuild their relationship with readers.” 

And thank you:

“THANK you for the work you do,” said Nana aba Duncan, a William Southam Journalism Fellow in Canada, the founder of Media Girlfriends, a podcast company and journalism industry network, and a past member of Poynter’s Leadership Academy for Women in Digital Media. “If you figure out the local journalism problem, please shout it from the rooftops.”

I have a lot of links to share with you from the last two weeks, but had to dismantle a pandemic trampoline ahead of a tropical storm/hurricane, so I’ll save them for next week.

Stay safe, drink water and thanks for being the best newsletter subscribers ever. 

Kristen

Pictured above: Clockwise from top left: Patrícia Campos Mello, Nana aba Duncan, Sarphan Uzunoğlu, Caroline Jerotich Kimutai and Jakub Górnicki, submitted photos.