The internet, and many journalists who work on it, have this unending hunger. 

Chartbeat says we’re low!

CrowdTangle says this is trending!

Someone else wrote this thing we can aggregate and add no value to but we must feed the beast! 

This feels like a problem that should have expired by now, but as more newsrooms switch to subscriptions and memberships to make money and keep publishing, the value of people’s time and attention matters way beyond pageviews.

So what happens when you stop feeding the beast crap?

• The (Charleston, South Carolina) Post and Courier started publishing fewer stories and focused on adding context and grew digital subscriptions by 250%.

• The Philadelphia Inquirer’s audience team stopped spending all its time on Twitter and started using an automated service. This allowed the team to put time into growing other things, including Instagram and newsletters, while Twitter referral traffic stayed the same.

• And The Suffolk Times, a weekly in New York, devoted 10,000 words to the story of a woman who went missing more than 50 years before. That work led to the discovery of her remains.

This week in How We Did It, we have a few examples of slow, purposeful work from The (Raleigh, North Carolina) News & Observer; Matter News, an online nonprofit out of Columbus, Ohio; and the Highlands Current, a weekly from Cold Spring, New York. 

Their work shows the value of time in getting records and uncovering conflicts of interest, in adding context to what’s happening around us, and in being thoughtful about tough stories.

You can read more about them here in our last dispatch during this July of great local journalism. But we’re not done. This has been fun, and I’d like to keep it going. I won’t make these the focus of this newsletter each week, but will share a link so you can follow along. 

What’s your newsroom working on? Share the work that you’re proud of, and I’ll reach out if we decide to feature it. 

Here’s what the local journalists who shared their work this week recommended for doing more like it:

Be patient

“More than a year passed from the time I was tipped off to when this story ran,” said Dan Kane, an investigative reporter with The News & Observer, of an investigation into a conflict of interest at the University of North Carolina. “Newsrooms have to respect the fact that complicated and controversial stories take time to do right. That doesn't mean sitting around and waiting for records to be released, interviews granted, etc. You juggle other stories during those lulls. It's important to know how to file and track public records requests. When records are refused, ask for the legal reasons for denial. Often, as in this case, they are specious, and give more impetus to push for the information. Newsrooms need to ask themselves why a story matters, so that a lot of time isn't spent on something that might be interesting, but not important.”

Explain not just what, but why:

“You have to actively choose to write more evergreen stories,” said Ris Twigg, managing editor of Matter News. Twigg worked on an explainer on gentrification. “You have to choose not to write for quantity, but for quality. Journalism is an exchange of ideas and information, and if we can't do it creatively and informatively ... What value-add does the newspaper industry have anymore?”

Consider your purpose

“I received good advice from various people about how to approach the story,” said Chip Rowe, editor of Highlands Current on a story he wrote about a local extremist who uses his real name. “A media ethicist suggested that the goal should be to cause the least harm possible to bystanders. We decided not to give details about his family members (who wouldn’t comment), although they are well enough known in the immediate community. My primary concern was fallout for his kids, so we did our best not to give specifics. I asked a rabbi if we should write about the guy, and the rabbi thought we should, arguing that while white supremacists have the right to say what they will, they also should have to take responsibility for what they say, including in the local community. The continuing discussion we had was, once readers have this information, what should they do with it? In the end, we invited them to tell us what they thought could be done to combat hate locally. We also joined ProPublica’s Documenting Hate project so readers could report bias they had experienced.”

Screenshot, a UNC report published by The News & Observer

While you’re here:

Hey, editors: Launch your newsrooms stars by encouraging them to apply for this first-ever Poynter workshop for rising stars. The deadline is Aug. 15. Email me with questions!

Get money for in-depth projects: The Watchdog Writers Group is a new project from the University of Missouri’s Reynolds Journalism Institute that will “support authors as they write in-depth print journalism projects, while also training future generations of investigative reporters.”

Listen/learn: I’m so excited for this new podcast from API and It’s All Journalism on lessons from Table Stakes.

Meet Dolores: She's the subject of my latest Tampa Bay Times obit. She was an advocate for the mentally ill and a really devoted mom.

That’s it! See you next week!