Big Announcements: A New Newsroom, Neighborhood Connections, and Our Civic Assembly

Last week, we made some big announcements at CivicLex about some new projects and initiatives that we're rolling out this fall.

First, we're overhauling our newsroom, moving it into a new standalone CMS and website, and overhauling our newsletter strategy in advance of a planned newsroom expansion. We built this new strategy through the input of a 10+ person work group of Lexington residents, feedback from countless readers, and a civic info needs assessment that reached over a thousand folks across our city. Much of that journey has been led by Adrian Paul Bryant and it wouldn't be possible without support from Murry Foundation and Press Forward.

Second, we announced a new pilot program called 'Neighborhood Connections', that will fund neighbors across Lexington to throw block parties and start new community newsletters. This new strategy, led by Megan Gulla, was informed by Nathalia Benitez-Perez's work in Boston and the great Connective Tissue newsletter published by Sam Pressler.

Third, we announced our upcoming Civic Assembly. Led by Kit Anderson and Lilly Bramley, our Assembly's focus is our Urban County Charter, and has the potential to fundamentally reshape how our community governs itself. We've spent the past year building this assembly alongside a separate work group of 10 Lexington residents, and the final topics for deliberation will be decided by public engagement we're planning this fall, which we hope will reach thousands of residents.

Lastly, we announced a Business Membership program, giving local businesses a clearer way to support our work. In combination with our individual membership program that has been built from the ground up by Noel Osborn, we're hoping to bring our small-dollar memberships to over 25% of our revenue and bring our total local support to over 70% of our revenue over the next year or two. Eventually, we're hoping to move our membership model into a much deeper role in decision making at CivicLex.

Engaging so many people in the decisions we make is not simple. It makes things take longer. It can be frustrating. It creates new tensions. It's especially hard when we're trying to align so many things at once like this. But we think it's the only path towards the civic renewal that we're trying to foster. And still, we can do better. If we're asking our institutions to do it, we have to model it ourselves.