On another post Fignewtonville asked the question – In the absence of the Tab, what are the community forums to exchange information?
Where do you go to find out what’s going on around the city? I’ll get the ball rolling but leave it to the rest of you to do the heavy lifting in the comment section
NewtonPatch.com – news
NextDoor – notices, bulletin board sort of stuff organized by neighborhood.
Facebook:
- Auburndale Village
- Nonantum Neighbrohood Association
- Newton Upper Falls Area Council
- Newton Corner Neighbors
Google Groups:
- Newton Highlands
- West Newton
- WabanNewton
ListServs
Email newsletters
As the LigerBots we also tap into the Listservs based at the schools. I know the one for the Franklin School is particularly active and acts more as a community board than one that is focused on the school.
There is also a very active Facebook Group called Newton Parents that is good at sharing information.
In addition to the ones you listed and Chuck’s mention of Newton Parents, I like Boston’s Hidden Restaurants for restaurant news. It covers the whole Boston area, but I’ve found out a lot of Newton restaurant news there. For instance….Shing Yee has closed!
I also find out local info from our PTO/school community. Their newsletter, community news, and our private FB group.
I go to Jerry Reilly for my news. The Oracle of Upper Falls!
How do I get on googlegroupwabannewton, Jerry? Or did you mean Nextdoorwaban? No fake news please!
Wow, I didn’t know about Shing Yee! But I did look it up and it seems that a Mexican Restaurant is moving in. So while we’re losing an old-standby it’s good to know that the space will be occupied.
West Newton actually has a good mix of restaurants and eateries.
@Sallee Lipshutz – Go to groups.google.com . Search for “WabanNewton”. It doesn’t look to active lately though
Newtonville listserv [email protected]
Sorry to derail the thread, but Shing Yee’s closing is awful news…
Newton Parents is a good source of information, and very well-moderated for a group of its size.
Sadly, the Patch is in the same league as the TAB as far as breadth, depth, timeliness, and relevance.
Patch was great under Melanie, then it really suffered. Jenna Fisher seems to be breathing more life into it, but I find that she editorializes way too much with kind of a flippant tone. I still follow Patch on FB but that’s about it.
City Council and School Committee now both have regular updates you can sign up for. You can subscribe to the school committee news at this page – https://www.newton.k12.ma.us/domain/68
School committee agendas, packets and reports are all available here as well. And of course all our meetings are on NewTV – https://newtv.org/all-episodes-in-government#catid24
The Newton Highlands list uses Google Groups. To subscribe to the email list, email to “[email protected]”. If you have a Google account you can also follow the link “https://groups.google.com/d/forum/newtonhighlands”.
This is all too compartmentalized and scattered. What we need is one go to online place which is the go to place for all things Newton. Village 14 COULD be the platform but not as longs as a small group of people get to dictate what we get to discuss. I thought of no less than 5 topics this week that I on which I would like to initiate dialogue. But my only option is try to find a semi-relevant topic and post a comment
I would challenge Greg and the other Village 14 contributers to figure out how we could leverage the forum to a more powerful influence. It is a great start but only a fraction of Newton even know it exists
Modern communications can be a two edge sword. Earlier this week, I talked with a friend in Mongolia and today I scanned the Manchester Guardian, Irish Times, New York Times, Washington Post and Boston Globe. I’m still amazed at how easy it is to make contact with people I want to discuss things with all over the globe, and all the information that’s at my finger tips right on this computer and on my Smart Phone. Never ceases to amaze me.
But while I can quickly get through to Mongolia and Ireland, I’ve found it much more difficult to make contact with people who live within walking distance of me in Newton Highlands.
As many of you will recall, several of us on the Newton Highlands Neighborhood Area Council spent much of the past three years trying to determine if homeowners in selected parts of Newton Highlands wanted to establish a local historic district. Approximately 270 private homes and the village center were included in the proposed district.
The last time I can recall making contact with people in this part of the Highlands was during Barney Franks’s first reelection fight with Margaret Heckler in 1982. Getting through and having a nice discussion with people in those 270 homes would have been a snap. We had five ways to easily target these homeowners. We could telephone and we knew they would many would answer and talk because there were no answering machines, caller IDs, or robocalls. We could write them a first class letter which they would almost always open and read carefully because they weren’t inundated with junk mail. Next, we could write articles, news releases or letters to the editor of the Newton Graphic which had a powerful impact because a lot of residents did take the time to give these a serious read. Then we could saturate them with literature or flyers or the signed “Dear Friend” cards that were a real novelty at the time. And we could knock on doors and feel pretty confident that at least some members of the family would be home and that they had time to talk.
I’ll be honest. This was Rodney Barker and myself (two octogenarians) heading up this effort and we were painfully slow in recognizing and utilizing all the “newfangled” communications systems and methodologies we might have employed. For a number of reasons, I don’t think these would have made much of a difference, but that’s something for another story. And we are receiving an award next week from Historic Newton for the work our committee did in putting together a comprehensive study of the Highlands and a priceless historical and architectural inventory of the homes in the proposed district.
Happy to announce that Amy Sangiolo is back! Go to: amysangiolo.com. Newsletter email updates will go out on Monday mornings. You can see latest posts now!
Claire, the city of Newton has an electronic bulletin board on its website where upcoming events are posted. The City Council and Mayor Fuller have newsletters to keep the public up to date on city business. Several councilors have their own newsletters. These would be the go to places for city information.
In addition all minutes, including actions, reports and attachments are available there too.
The listservs and google groups are mainly used by residents and their councilors to bring up topics specific to their Ward or Village.
There are some discussion google groups that anyone who joins can post topics of interest to them and other members discuss them. That sounds more like what you’re interested in. You could join an existing one or create your own.
Newton Parents Facebook group and google group are great resources for anyone with children in Newton. Any member can post.
For “in real time” tweets covering council and committee meetings on development follow Newton Villages Alliance – just weed out the commentary.
Few people know about any of these or if they do they’re not interested in joining.
Unlike a Discussion group or a Facebook page, Village 14 is a local, volunteer blog with administrators, moderators and contributors who attempt to post subjects of interest and news to many Newton residents after investigating those topics as much as possible. On topics that interest us, we use all available resources, like those listed above, to find out as much info as possible before posting. Generally blogs operate this way. V14’s readership is large for a local blog. More are always welcomed.