CivicLex have hosted a variety of community engagement events like the Urban Growth Festival where people of all ages participated in activities to share how they’d like to see Lexington grow and change.
Re-evaluating what news delivery looks like at CivicLex
Centering the community’s needs while finding an innovative format
While news creation is one aspect of what CivicLex does, the nonprofit organization based in Lexington, Kentucky, works to strengthen the civic health of its communities through many different initiatives, including K-12 education programming, community events and workshops, tools and resources, community engagement consulting — and more.
Because of this multifaceted nature of the organization, CivicLex wants to be strategic and intentional about any changes they make to the way they deliver news.
After an information needs assessment and several conversations with a more focused group of 10 people, CivicLex identified ways that they can expand their news coverage — and therefore amplify their impact in their community. For example, they heard that Lexingtonians want more coverage of the school district and public meetings.
But how exactly are they going to deliver those additional news stories? That’s the question that we are setting out to answer. Specifically, we want to make sure we are centering the community’s needs while finding an innovative format to give them the information they need. This is the first stage in an estimated three-month project.
Building from the weekly newsletter
Right now, CivicLex has one news product: a weekly newsletter. This newsletter updates folks on the biggest issues coming up in local government, showing them how and when they can participate in events, meetings and hearings. It’s a “look ahead” rather than a summary of what happened.
Feedback about this format has been positive. So, does expanded news coverage mean – a new newsletter? A daily one? A different layout on the website? An app? A podcast? Some kind of in-person experience?
To dig into these questions, we identified three initial steps:
- Learn more about what’s working for the format of the newsletter via surveys and testing.
- Learn more about what’s working (or not) for the format of the news part of the website.
- Take what we learn about the newsletter and website and apply it to a plan for expanded news coverage.
Reshaping the newsletter
CivicLex recently decided to shift from Mailchimp to MailerLite because of several frustrations related to the design capabilities, organization of email lists and cost. This was also an opportunity to redesign the newsletter.
To check back in with the community about what newsletter readers wanted out of the format, CivicLex reviewed previous survey data and ran changes past their 10-person working group. This group was intentionally recruited to represent a range of their audience, including a variety of political and ideological views and different levels of engagement, and has been working with CivicLex throughout their evaluation of expanded news coverage. What they found in this initial feedback was that people were mostly ambivalent to changes in the newsletter’s layout and visuals.
As we planned the next stage of our project and prepared to ask more questions about which format people in Lexington prefer to consume news, we were concerned that these additional responses might also not give us a clear direction. So, we’re planning to approach the next phase of the project a little differently. The goal will be to design the new or updated news product more directly with the community. Through this we will dig deeper into which format will best serve CivicLex’s current and future audiences.
What’s next
CivicLex is known for its creative approaches to get people involved — and excited about — civic engagement. For example, in a workshop about understanding the city budget, CivicLex staff will often lead participants in the process of building their own ideal budget and host a “Budget Price is Right” game.
We hope to bring this same highly-interactive spirit to a session focused on designing CivicLex’s next news product. The workshop will invite community members to be a part of the news product design process.
Stay tuned for more on what this next stage will look like! And if you have ideas or want to chat more about this process, please reach out at lytle@rjionline.org.
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Cite this article
Lytle, Emily (2025, March 24). Re-evaluating what news delivery looks like at CivicLex. Reynolds Journalism Institute. Retrieved from: https://rjionline.org/news/re-evaluating-what-news-delivery-looks-like-at-civiclex/
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