How the Bloomfield Info Project is building pipelines to civic participation in New Jersey
Bloomfield resident tracks her journey from subscriber to staffer
The Bloomfield Info Project is a nonprofit local news organization creating a new model for local public media in New Jersey. Bloomfield Info uses journalism, technology, organizing, and education to build pipelines to civic participation in underserved communities.
In November, I spoke at the Center for Cooperative Media’s 2022 NJ Local News Summit about my experience moving through that pipeline as one of the original Bloomfield Info subscribers, then its first hire, and now its Engagement Coordinator.
Here are those remarks, lightly edited for clarity, along with the video of my lightning talk below.
In the spring of 2020, I had just graduated from Montclair State University with a degree in TV and digital media after spending 12 years in human resources. It was also the beginning of the pandemic and I was feeling isolated, as so many of us were — and I wanted to do something in media to become more involved with my community.
I came across Bloomfield Info from a Google search and signed up for the organization’s Daily Bulletin, a newsletter that now provides more than 1,000 local households with useful local news and information every weekday. I also reached out to the director, Simon Galperin, to see how I could get involved.
Simon had heard from community leaders that the mayor was allegedly going to appoint himself township administrator. So I wrote an explainer on what exactly the township administrator actually does.
I was not a professional journalist, but a community member with some writing experience, but weeks after I started asking around, the township announced they would extend their search for a new administrator. That’s when I realized that giving citizens a platform to ask questions can create a culture of accountability in our community.
In September 2021, I joined Bloomfield Info as its first Civic Info Producer and first employee, curating local news and information for the same Daily Bulletin that inspired me to get involved in the first place.
Five months later, I moved into my current role as Engagement Coordinator. (The Daily Bulletin is now produced by my teammate and fellow Essex County resident Olivia Rizzo.)
I love this role because I get to work directly with people and organizations in our community to build relationships, coordinate events, and develop campaigns that help us support the community and meet our goals as civic partners.
Here are three areas emblematic of that work.
Training and equipping community reporters
Our community reporter program was crafted from my experience reporting on the township administrator and trains and pays residents to perform acts of journalism like listening to the info needs of their neighbors, documenting public meetings, conducting interviews, and writing explainers on issues that matter to the community.
Our most recent trainees shared that the program:
- Helped them feel more connected to their community.
- Helped them gain a deeper understanding of how citizens can participate in local news and inform and organize their communities.
- Taught them that the things they need to know as citizens don’t have to be dictated by big national media.
Bloomfield Info’s next training series begins in spring 2023.
Collaborating with local businesses
Collaboration is one of our core values — and it’s an approach we take with all of our stakeholders.
One thing we heard from members of the small business community is that marketing is an ongoing challenge. This is especially true for businesses owned by women and people of color who don’t always have the same access to capital or the resources to invest in every element of their business.
So for our latest marketing effort, we bought $400 in gift cards to local BIPOC and women-owned cafes to raffle to new and existing subscribers.
We promoted the campaign across social media and to our Daily Bulletin subscribers. We held weekly drawings and gave our promotional partners physical and digital assets to help promote the campaign. In all, more than 5,000 people in the Bloomfield area saw our promotion of these local businesses, and 200 entered to win gift cards.
We gained 145 new subscribers — or a 10% increase — for our list as a result of the campaign. All of our marketing dollars went back to the community we serve.
Providing access to food
Finally, the opportunity to have a direct impact on the issues that matter most to me is an important part of my work at Bloomfield Info. In particular, I think about our work to increase food access for local residents.
Food access is something Bloomfield Info has been working on since its launch at the height of the pandemic. Here’s what we did as part of our approach to this issue:
- An SMS service sending folks information on where they can get free food every week along with other aid that may be available to them
- Distributions of food and other essential items at community events
- Coordination with public health stakeholders to identify gaps in access
- Recruiting nearly a dozen community ambassadors to hand out food access flyers in their neighborhoods
- Publishing How to get free food in Bloomfield when you have no money, a comprehensive guide to accessing local and state food aid
From our Daily Bulletin to our community training, collaborations, and support services, Bloomfield Info is taking a comprehensive approach to meeting the local news and information needs of our community. I’m an example of the sorts of pipelines for civic participation we’re building in our community.
And I’m excited for our growth in Essex County and beyond.
Nikki Villafane is the Engagement Coordinator for the Bloomfield Info Project, an initiative of the Community Info Coop. Contact: nikki@bloomfieldinfo.org.
About the Center for Cooperative Media: The Center is a primarily grant-funded program of the School of Communication and Media at Montclair State University. Its mission is to grow and strengthen local journalism, and in doing so serve New Jersey residents. The Center is supported with funding from Montclair State University, the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation, Democracy Fund, the New Jersey Local News Lab (a partnership of the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation, Democracy Fund, and Community Foundation of New Jersey), and the Abrams Foundation. For more information, visit CenterforCooperativeMedia.org.
