Happy Summer! Just wanted folks to know that I have evolved my weekly email and website and migrated it to a new entity – FigCityNews.com. Fig City News is a new community news hub to help residents stay informed about news and events in Newton. Everyone is invited to sign up for FigCityNews’ free newsletters. Currently there are two: One has basically the same content as my current email newsletter – the DRT meetings, Board and Commission Meetings, City Council and School Committee Meetings, and the popular Weekly Governmental Calendar; and the second email newsletter has news and more in-depth articles about current local events as well as community announcements. Both are works in progress. All content from the newsletters will be available on the website.
I started Fig City News with the assistance of residents concerned about the need for a knowledgeable, trusted resource for Newton events and issues. In the next week or so, I’ll migrate my weekly Local Government Update newsletter, which I’ve sent out for the last seven years, to be a newsletter hosted by this new site.
I hope you will enjoy Fig City News – where local Newton residents can share information about community events, the work that community groups are working on, and just help continue to build connections between all of our villages and each other. We welcome people to write articles of interest to the community and organizations and businesses to submit events. To learn more, see FigCityNews’ policies and submission guidelines and email [email protected].
loving the articles so far on the site. ie no bias/slanted headlines, just fact based articles relevent to Newton Residents
Reminds me of village14 “before” it was hijacked by far left progressives to push their agenda down the throat of residents.
Well, the posts thus far are all unsigned (is Amy writing all of them?), it mentions an Editorial Committee but doesn’t tell us who they are, and all I see are basic headlines and event listings like Amy’s original newsletter, so I’m not quite sure what Bugek is looking at (or if he even looked at it before taking his usual shot at this website). Can’t tell yet if it is supposed to be a newsletter, a newspaper, a Patch like entity or an arm of Amy’s future campaign for Mayor. How often is it going to be updated?
But glad to have another site to bookmark and look at.
Happy to give it some room to grow as well. Not every question has to be answered on day 1.
I think I get the concept better now. Multiple newsletters, with posts on the website that mirror the newsletters. Should have read Amy’s post more clearly.
The FigCityNews.Com site looks great. I especially like how it is organized into sections such as City Hall, Schools, Arts& Culture, and Villages – with a subsection for each village.
This will be a valuable resource for all Newton residents.
This has lots of promise. And unlike The Beacon, who’s development friendly board promises “unbiased and nonpartisan” (doth protest too much?), Fig City News’ board stresses editorial integrity, with diverse oversight body.
Will be interesting to see how each paper will handing the next big city issue.
It great to see more voices, but as far as I’ve seen so far, these are two different animals. My understanding of the Beacon is that it intends hire professionals to cover the city as a news source. FigCityNews seems to be more of a community board.
Having been part of both types of organizations in this city, I can say that, while there will be some crossover, these are not the same thing.
I agree with Chuck. Two very different animals.
Matt, I’m happy to have both options, but I find it curious that you aren’t applying the same standards to both entities. After all, Fig City News is owned 100% by Amy, a former (and perhaps future) candidate for Mayor, and the board seems filled with folks who supported her for mayor. I’m not sure how the oversight body of Fig City is any different than the Beacon, in fact, the Beacon seems to have put a lot more thought into it than Fig City thus far.
Again, I’m fine with allowing both entities to find their footing. And every news orgnazation has its own biases that it brings to its work. But your comparison between the two entities does more to reveal your own biases than those between the two jounalistic entities. How about giving both a fair shake?
Amy’s current newsletter is one of the best resources available in Newton for those wanting to stay informed of what is going on at City Hill that upcoming weeks. I know that I read it each Monday to inform what meetings I might want to pop into that week and then reference it during the week to use the links to Zoom Meetings and Agenda. So much easier and more informative than trying to hunt around the city’s website.
The recent addition to close the loop after those meeting and provide some recaps and links to the recordings has only enhanced the value. Expanding to add additional community news and allow community input is also great.
I think splitting them and then making the content available in a consolidated fashion makes sense and potentially adds to the number of residents who will read it. All good things for increasing community knowledge and engagement. Subscribe to one newsletter, both newsletters or access all the content on the Website.
I’m looking forward to reading both newsletters from my perch here in Marlboro. I see promise with both, but Amy is certainly setting the bar high with her approach and the inclusiveness of the newsletter’s format and content. It builds nicely on t;he way her newsletters have been presented for the past several years. This will also be the first time that Newton will have two newspapers (albeit electric ones only) since the Newton Graphic and Newton Villager were distributed here during the early 1950s.
This sounds like an exciting new resource – thank you Amy!
@bugek – V14 is a blog. It’s never claimed to be a newspaper or unbiased. Blogs are more like the OpEd section of a paper – each V14 blogger has their own points of view and we all have other V14 bloggers we disagree with sometimes (or much of the time).
True, unfortunately v14 was really the only source of local news. Now with fig city news, i can skip v14 completely
Amy has clearly achieved two good deeds with one website.
Fig City News is certainly a welcome addition and a community resource. We need a constellation of places to go to follow municipal and cultural happenings. This adds to what the Newton Beacon is looking to provide.
Bugek, enjoy Fig City News! May you find whatever you are looking for there.
This is great. I’d love a one stop shop for local news. Cute name, too.
Amy did a great job with this. Lots of time and effort put into it and she deserves great thanks.
Awaiting the development of The Beacon. I missed the zoom meeting, have they posted it somewhere?
Amy has done so much for Newton. She’s incredibly dedicated to this community. I’m really appreciative of this new effort with Fig City News, and will gladly do whatever I can to support it.
Great to have a variety of news sources! But ‘Fig City’? Ugh.
Ann, on behalf of all Fig entities, I take that personally… 😉
It’s catchy!
Personally I welcome two purported unbiased fact-reporting news sources. As in all adversarial proceedings and worthy debates, discerning eyes and ears can read and hear the nuances that lead to good judgements. I believe we will be well served in Newton to learn both sides of the “facts” being presented and be able easily to tease out the underlying assumptions of any fact-propped biases. Go Fig City and Go Newton Beacon!
I don’t understand why you see this as “adversarial” Sallee. I spent decades of my career in the news business. We often viewed other news operations as healthy competition that motivated us to excel, but never as adversaries.
She could have meant adversarial in the legal sense: the readers and the newspapers as arm’s length parties across the table from each other. Agree with healthy competition dynamic.
Perhaps.
But there’s no such thing as “both sides of the ‘facts.'”
There’s just facts.
In most cases facts are reportable as facts. But those of us old enough to have seen biases creep in among the facts welcome multi-sourced facts.
Nah. Facts are always facts. How one presents or selectively chooses facts is, in fact, something different.
Please add me to your email list. I live in Newton and Would love to hear about the news