Welcome to the FIMS Lab newsletter

In this edition:

• FIMS Lab highlight: NOLA.com’s IG news coverage

• One Marketing Thing: Turn a meeting into a memory

• One Trending thing: 🐹 vs 🐶 

• 🤖 One AI Thing: Preparing for the first “AI election”

Total read time: 🍞 Enjoy while eating one piece of buttered toast

FIMS Lab highlights:

• Toby Collodora’s slides and recording on subscription retention (Password F=FsAb09)

• The recording of last week’s subscription sprint session with Amalie and Medill’s Larry DeGaris (Password: M?j4NYX)

By now you’re all familiar with the salt wedge threatening Louisiana’s drinking water supply.

In addition to robust digital and print coverage, NOLA.COM is also publishing news coverage on IG stories, pinned to highlights. Their regular posts about the wedge are receiving between 1300 and 3000+ engagements per post and are focused on reader and resident concerns such as effects on drinking water and lead contamination. This Reel prompted several good comments.

Help shape phase two of the FIMS Lab 💕

One marketing thing: Make meetings memorable

Many of you are meeting with community funders and donors, building important relationships. Here’s one example of how genuine enthusiasm led to an unforgettable memory. Other ideas include small (or large) thank-you gifts. What have you tried?

One Trending thing: Tiny pets are a big thing

Americans are expected to spend a record $12.2 billion on Halloween in 2023, mostly on candy, costumes and decor. Spending on pet costumes alone is expected to reach $700 million.

But it won’t all be for dogs and cats, whose popularity appears to be waning in favor of hamsters, reptiles and guinea pigs. (Maybe this will finally force Apple to create a guinea pigs emoji?!)

That’s right. The Wall Street Journal reports PetSmart, Chewy and Petco are all selling tiny sofas and other small-pet decor so owners can proudly display the habitats rather than hide them in hallways and back rooms.

While the number of dogs (65.1 million) in American households is still higher than smaller pets (12.7 million); ownership of gerbils, hamsters, lizards and other small pets jumped 7 percent this year while dog ownership dropped 5.6 percent.

Why is this important for local newsrooms? To be honest, it may not be.

However, it’s safe to assume anyone spending $279 on a tiny console or buying hamster snacks on Etsy has disposable income. Why not capture some of this interest by testing a pop-up newsletter for small pets? Or, if you host a pet Halloween costume contest, create a special category for pocket pets. Plus, they are adorable and make for great video.

We know pet owners can be insane passionate. Maybe someone in your town is killing it with their small business creating tiny engraved castles for the 129 thousand members of this guinea pig advice group.

One AI thing:

Even if you don’t (yet) use AI in your daily work, the technology is expected to impact democratic elections worldwide in 2024.

The non-partisan Brennan Center for Justice recently released a report that warns of the many risks of the first election in which AI-generated content is being produced and consumed at scale.

Free tools are widely available to generate video and images, and replicate human voices. And with headlines and context stripped from link shares on X, formerly Twitter, anyone can repost content with their own take.

The Brennan report calls for specific actions from the Federal Election Commission, federal government and platforms and AI companies. For newsroom leaders it’s important to realize this technology is available to anyone with a smartphone or computer and robust verification and fact-checking will be more critical than ever.

Upcoming:   

• Journalism Funders Gathering (virtual/paid) Oct. 11-12 Link

• Our next FIMS Group call: Jim Brown from Borrell Associates will talk about local advertising trends, sales hiring and retention, affiliate marketing, events, video and more. October 17 at 4pm ET

• Register now for the next Big Branded Call: Cause marketing with Dallas Morning News, October 18 at 1pm ET. Last month’s feature: How the Advocate went from $0 to $1 million in branded content revenue

• INMA Media Subscriptions Summit: February 26-March 1 Link