The July 31, 1992, edition of the Spokane Chronicle (Newspapers.com)

Here’s a sentence I’ve never written in nearly eight years of covering the media: A daily newspaper revived the evening edition. That newspaper is The Spokesman-Review in Spokane, Washington. And the evening edition, The Spokane Daily Chronicle, is now an e-edition aimed at giving more to subscribers and helping print readers make the transition to digital. 

“If our core readers stick with us through everything that’s happened — losing Saturday, rates going up, then we’ve won,” said editor Rob Curley. 

So far, the experiment seems to be working.

I’ve spent more than two years making the case that feature obits deserve space again in local newsrooms, but that they should be tailored for digital audiences with sharp headlines, lots of photos, compelling storytelling and an understanding of the work that resonates with audiences.

That project, which I work on with the Tampa Bay Times, and the return of the Chronicle are two examples of journalism that, once revived, can support the business and mission itself. 

What else should make a comeback?

I know print and digital journalism best, but I’d love to hear your ideas on those two, radio, public media and television. What about …

School lunch calendars, but online and interactive, where there’s a revenue sharing opportunity with the PTA?

Recipe sections sponsored by local food producers that are easy to save and share? (The Spokesman-Review is republishing old Dorothy Dean recipes, which any newsroom with a decent archive could do.)

Meeting coverage created by members of the community who get trained to document what’s happening (hey that’s already a thing with City Bureau’s Documenters!)

What else could we build off of? Let me know what you think and if I get enough, I’ll share some examples next week.

While you’re here:

• Bellingham, Washington, has a new local paper! 

• Dan Kennedy reported some more good news this week: The Berkshire Eagle bought a new printing press.

• Read my colleague Amaris Castillo’s Some Personal News profile of a former Associated Press journalist who became a fiction writer. (And bring a fan, it starts out pretty steamy.)

• Here’s another good Castillo read: Why a small group of clinical psychologists is helping journalists with trauma.

• You can request to join LION’s News Entrepreneur Community on Slack, which is a “peer-learning community designed to help people learn from each other by sharing resources, templates, advice, and lessons learned from their work.” 

• Read about Facebook Bulletin, which announced the local news writers who are joining the project.

• For Current, Kayla Benjamin wrote about the five takeaways from public media’s climate change coverage expansion.

• On Medium, Mark Glaser has a good primer on how Congress and government can help stabilize local news. And from June, here’s my colleague Angela Fu on the breakdown of several pieces of legislation.

• And read this case study from Anna Brugmann for Rebuild Local News on the impact of the Local Journalism Sustainability Act at the Afro-American in Baltimore.

• Sign up for Poynter’s upcoming training on Covering Jails and Police Reform. It’s free!

• This week for the Tampa Bay Times, I shared the obituary a former Tampa Tribune sports reporter wrote for himself while he was in hospice. His advice at the end is an always needed reminder for how to live.

That’s it for me. Here’s a thing I’ve started reminding myself again as COVID-19 letters come home from my kids’ schools daily and, you know, I live in Florida: Unlock your jaw, lower your shoulders, roll your neck.

Kristen