CLEVELAND — One of the nation's largest nonprofit local news initiatives officially launched on Tuesday.
Signal Cleveland is focused on fusing local journalism with community building, diverse reporting, and serving the Greater Cleveland region. The news group debuted its website today, giving citizens full access to its content.
Editor in chief Lila Mills says it's a different approach to sharing local stories and an easy breakdown of news that residents want more of.
"For us, best case scenario, someone is dealing with an issue in their children's school and they think to themselves, 'You know what? Let me go to Signal Cleveland. They probably have done an explainer or a report on this,'" Mills explained. "We want to be able to produce data, guides, and news that helps people live their lives in Greater Cleveland."
Signal Cleveland is part of the American Journalism Project, which aims to "solve the local news crisis" through a not-for-profit approach. Similar initiatives have been launched in New York, Chicago, and Detroit, among several other cities.
"[It's about] the idea that we want to meet people where they are," Mills said. "We're going to try something out in the Central neighborhood of Cleveland shortly around text messaging. We are making a hypothesis that text messaging is going to be a good way to receive news and information from us, and two-way texting. They can text us back."
3News contributor Mark Naymik will serve as managing editor of Signal Cleveland, which you can find on all social media platforms as well as 95.9 FM radio.