Local News and Information Ecosystem Panel Discussion (From Little Local Conversations One Year Anniversary Event)
Listen to an in-depth panel discussion on the local Watertown news and information ecosystem! This was part of the one year anniversary celebration for Little Local Conversations that happened over at the Mosesian Center for the Arts on March 18th, 2025. The panel featured Dan Hogan (Director of News and Studio Operations at WCA-TV), Charlie Breitrose (Editor of Watertown News), Tyler Cote (Community Engagement Specialist for the City of Watertown), and Steve Owens (Massachusetts State Representative). If you want to learn more about any of the speakers, you can listen to their own featured episodes on the podcast (Dan, Charlie, Tyler, Steve).
The panel discussion focuses on the importance of the local news ecosystem, how each guest navigates their role in gathering and sharing information, what they think is going well, what they're struggling with, and what they think could be improved upon. At the end they answered a bunch of questions from the audience as well. Take a listen and share your feedback with any of them about what you think of their work or what you would like to see!
(Click here to listen on streaming apps) (Full transcript below)
Reach out to Dan: wcatv.org
Reach out to Charlie: www.watertownmanews.com
Reach out to Tyler: tcote@watertown-ma.gov
Or show up to one of the Watertown Chats:
watertown-ma.gov/1343/Watertown-Chats
Reach out to Steve:
www.votesteveowens.com
@votesteveowens (Instagram, Facebook)
A video of the full anniversary event can be found on WCA-TV's website here
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Thank you Arsenal Financial for sponsoring Little Local Conversations! Listen to my Watertown Trivia episode with Arsenal Financial’s Doug Orifice to have some fun learning about Watertown!
Thanks to podcast promotional partner the Watertown Business Coalition, a nonprofit organization focused on connecting local businesses and strengthening our community. Check them out at https://watertownbusinesscoalition.com/.
This program is supported in part by a grant from the Watertown Cultural Council, a local agency which is supported by the Mass Cultural Council, a state agency.
Transcript
Matt: 0:07
Hi there, welcome to the Little Local Conversations podcast. I'm your host, Matt Hanna. Every episode, I sit down for a conversation with someone in Watertown to discover the people, places, stories, and ideas of Watertown. This episode is a special live podcast that was recorded at the anniversary event that I held last month at the Mosesian Center for the Arts, which was a great event. Thank you for everyone who came out. But I definitely wanted to make sure that everyone who wasn't able to make it was also able to listen to this conversation, because I think it was a very informative one and important for our community to think about these things. So for part of the event, I did a live panel on the topic of the local news and information ecosystem and, yeah, I'll just get right into it because it was kind of a long one, but I think there was lots of good stuff in there. And I just want to apologize again, Dan, sorry, I messed up your title at the beginning. I was so into my clever intro that I didn't actually write down the actual titles that you guys have. Sorry about that. Director of News and Studio Operations is Dan's correct title.
Matt: 1:07
What I want to do tonight is do another podcast, and it's going to be a podcast panel. You'll know who they are, but I'll introduce them as a geologist, a home renovation marketer, a freight transportation manager and a three-time high school bowling champion. If you listened to episodes you would know those ones, but I'll also introduce him as Charlie Breitrose, who is Watertown News. Dan Hogan, who is the production manager at news, I'm sorry, I always get your news, Director of News, thank you, at WCA-TV. We’re going to have Steve Owens, who is our state rep. And we're going to have Tyler Cote, who is the Community Engagement Specialist for the city. And we're going to talk about the local news and information ecosystem here. I thought that was a relevant topic for tonight, so come on up guys. I'll grab the other mics.
Matt: 2:08
So yeah, so we're going to have a conversation, like I said, about the local news and information ecosystem, which I think is such an important thing to talk about for so many reasons. It's what kind of got me started on this train, but also what these people have been doing for many years themselves too. So the first thing, we'll get a little starter here with just what's your process for gathering news and how do you share your news, information, however you want to think about that word. I know news is sometimes a little more smaller than the picture that we're imagining with that term too. So information, communication within the city and how the state comes down to the city and vice versa. So let's go down the line. Dan, you want to start with what your process is both with gathering and sharing it.
Dan: 2:52
Yeah, so WCA-TV, we film almost all the meetings that happen in town, as well as sports and events. So we have the pulse on a lot of different things that happen in town. So generally my process is I, A. talk to our staff who are filming all these meetings and events to see what's going on. What did you see that happened during this meeting? Oftentimes I'll know what the general subjects are like any given city council meeting, school committee. I can see the agenda and see what's going to be talked about and know what's on the horizon. But I kind of just ask people what happened in this meeting? Did anything stick out to you?
Dan: 3:27
Our staff are not news reporters by training. They're videographers, they're filmers, not necessarily, don't have a news background, so they may not know what to look for. So at the end of the day I'll just go through and I'll watch a meeting, find out what happened. A lot of times we'll get press releases and announcements sent to us about events to cover, things going on. Charlie, the guy to my left, does an awesome job covering the city. Sometimes he gets a story out before I have a chance to watch whatever meeting that that story happened in. So I'll see Charlie's article and be like, oh, I've got to check this thing out. So that's kind of how I go about gathering news most of the time. I don't go out into the community. You're not going to see me going man on the street kind of stuff gathering stories that way. It's a lot of watching through WCA-TV's coverage of things to kind of find out what's going on.
Charlie: 4:13
I'm similar, I guess, but I actually do try and get out when I can. Early on, I would go to more of the meetings. Now, actually, I'd love to tape them off the cable. They do such a good job and they're always reliable so I can use that to keep some nights free. But then I will go to more events. You know, if I wasn't here I might come on my own. But, um, just talking to people, like kind of like what Dan said people send me information. That's always a big thing. You know, people want their announcements out there. I might find something online like social media. I have google alerts going. You know, just talking to people in town, I mean just kind of trying to keep my eye out. It's kind of like always being on the lookout. So yeah, it's a fun process, but it's sort of like an ongoing thing.
Tyler: 4:49
I would say, from the city's perspective, a lot of how we kind of gather information and put information out, it needs to be that two-way street, two-way conversation. Because the most challenging thing that we do or most challenging thing that, I'll speak for myself, is that prioritization of information and kind of choosing what are the things that do go out at the top of a newsletter, what are the things that go out as a press release or as something that is focused, that we're pushing multiple times over the course of a week. And a lot of that is kind of trying to have a finger on the pulse, trying to have an understanding as to what actually matters to our residents, to our constituents, to our businesses. And then from within City Hall there's obviously that prioritization that goes into it as well of, we've been working on this project for six years and it is coming to a close.
Tyler: 5:37
This is an amazing thing. We should be celebrating the fact that this long process that has involved thousands and thousands of engagement touch points and what that means and how meaningful that is, like we should be putting all that information out. So you know, it really is just trying to understand what matters from within City Hall, but maybe even more importantly, trying to understand what matters to each and every resident that we're communicating with every single day as well. Because that helps us prioritize and helps us understand what information that we do need to go and find and seek out and what information that we do need to do specials with Dan at WCA-TV or giving Charlie a call and saying, hey, you know, would love to maybe see if we can have a chat to set up an interview at some time about this story. So successful communications, in my mind, really does need to be that two-way street, because then that helps us have an understanding as to what we need to prioritize for all of our residents.
Steve: 6:35
Yeah, and just want to first of all thank you, Matt, for bringing us all together, putting out your podcast. You ask how we get our information? Well, welcome, you're one of the resources that I use to get information about the community. And I know this isn't part of the question, but can everybody who has been interviewed by Matt just raise your hand, because there's a lot of us in this room right now. All right, so everybody who has their hand down, those are your next ones, I think, Matt so.
Matt: 7:01
I got a list, don't worry.
Steve: 7:03
I'm sure you do. I'm sure you do. So also, I want to thank Charlie and Dan for the work that you guys do because, as Tyler said, this is a two way street, particularly for me, right. I have information that I want to get out to everybody, but I also need to get information about what's going on with the community to do my job, which is to represent you all in East Watertown and West Cambridge. So I need the work that you're doing and I think, Charlie, I've told you before you cannot move out of town. Like, don't even try, because we will stop you, we will tie you somewhere so you can keep doing this. Because Watertown used to have two print newspapers back in the day. And even recently it had a print newspaper and some websites and I think we had one of the first micro-local blogs ever. Lisa Williams did that and she's out at GBH now. So we have had a news ecosystem, but right now I think you guys are doing the real heavy lifting for things that we as a community rely on. And I have, some of you might laugh. I've cultivated a reputation for showing up to a lot of things in person and I know about the things to go to because of the work that you guys do. So getting information is very much, you know, from the output that the city does. The new newsletters are great, Charlie's work, the work on cable. I think I'm on, I don't know how many other newsletters coming into me and in terms of you know the output, there is some level of prioritization.
Steve: 8:23
I send out a newsletter every month with a list of events that are of interest. So I have to pick through those to make sure that it's things that I want the community to know about. Because we're focusing on one thing or another or just because they're good events that I want everybody to go to. So I like events. What can I say?
Steve: 8:40
So my reliance on the work that you do is probably you know as much as any other you know citizen of Watertown who wants to stay informed, who needs to stay informed and who needs a source of news at the local level, because we are really losing a lot of local journalism and local newspapers throughout the Commonwealth, right. I mean the Watertown news. I don't know. Like that disappeared. There's a lot of other communities locally where their local paper, their town paper, disappeared or prints recycled USA Today content and that's it. So we're really going through a process right now where we need people in the communities reporting on the communities and telling people what's going on in their neighborhoods and in their local, whether it's the city, the state, or just their street.
Matt: 9:23
Yeah, and then for me, I'm new to this equation so I'm also kind of building off of what they do because I still don't know if I consider myself news. I think I kind of fit in by being, I get to go longer in depth and get more of the personal stories behind people. They are kind of filling in the niche of the news and that lets me kind of do this additional building onto that and building it out more. So I'm really reliant on them to have that base there for me to be able to build upon, which is great. And I think also getting the personal story should be considered. I mean, you guys get personal stories too. I don't want to say that you guys don't, but being able to have the time to do that is something harder for you guys when you have so much that you guys are trying to keep up with. But I think the personal story helps build that community and makes people, I hope at least, want to go then find out what's going on in town and reach out to you guys and your stuff as well. And I've had people come up to me and say they've gotten more involved because they've heard stuff on the podcast or I've made connections between you know, like the WBC has an Empowering Women event tomorrow and I had the Youth Coalition peer leaders on and then they got invited to be at the event because they heard about it on the podcast. And it's like I like being able to bring people together in person and I think that's what I'm hoping to do with mine.
Matt: 10:38
So, yeah, thank you for everything, as Steve said, that you guys do, because it's really important. So let's move on to the next couple here, which is, if you want to tackle them both or we can do it one at a time. So what do you think your work is doing well in town, which we've already kind of touched on a little bit, but also, what are you struggling with with your work to make the impact that you're hoping to?
Dan: 10:57
Yeah, I mean, I think WCA-TV in general, I think we do a pretty good job of covering as much of the town as is possible. You know, as I mentioned, like we're filming almost every municipal meeting. We're filming most of the high school sports games, most of the events that happen in town, like the big ones, like faire in the square, the arts market. You know even this. You know we try to be everywhere, everywhere that we can. You know, I think, where the where our struggles are and where I think where we could do better, and we're always actively trying to figure this out, is there's a segment of the population that will always watch Watertown Cable, no matter what. And they're avid watchers of every city council meeting and every municipal meeting that happens in town.
Dan: 11:40
The challenge is, from the news perspective, really reaching everybody that we should be reaching. Because I know, like my news show that I do every week, it's online, like it's on WCATV.org, it's on Comcast and RCN, but it's not even on like one of the HD channels, it's on one of the standard definition channels.
Dan: 11:58
So we're already battling against people being able to actually find us on their TV guide. And then we're also battling against the fact that we're not even that most people don't even have cable anymore. Like people are cutting the cord so like they can't even switch to our channel easily. We're on Roku, we're on Apple TV, we're on Fire Stick, but like you gotta go download an app and you gotta do all this stuff to get there. So, you know, we're trying to do more stuff like with social media and Instagram and getting more stuff on YouTube, you know, to try to get it out there, cause that's where I find the stories that I put out, the news and videos I put out, that's where they get the most traction. But we still have to, you know, fulfill our kind of obligation to the cable side, cause there is a large segment of the population that does watch cable and they watch us religiously, but it's a small part and we have to reach that other kind of 80% of the population. So that's kind of where the challenge comes in.
Charlie: 12:47
Yeah, I mean I'd like to think I'm trying to really hit the highlights and I would say when I started out I felt like I had more of a handle on like almost all the meetings, which probably wasn't actually true. But it's become clear that more is going on in town, more like there's more meetings, there's more different committees, there's more big projects. So struggling just to keep up with what I consider the main news is becoming more of a challenge. And then certainly I'd love to do more of what Matt's doing and do in-depth things about a person or about a group or about an event coming up. I just don't, unfortunately, have the time to do it, and sometimes it's frustrating because I can kind of see it and I'd be like, oh, that'd be fun, and unfortunately I don't really have a budget to kind of send people out to do stories for me. And you know I'm primarily written with some photography, but I'd also love to be able to do some more like video and things like that, but right now I'm still on the written word typically.
Tyler: 13:37
Yeah, I think from the city something that I'm really proud of and I'll speak for what we've done over the last year and four-ish months, which is all the amount of time that I've been with the city. But something I'm really proud of is that I think we've built an expectation from our residents that they're expecting things from our city to get news out and to get information out and to let them know what's happening. Because what that means is that you are building an engagement ecosystem where people have that expectation and they're starting to go straight to you to try and find that information. And to use our community map a little bit in our communications map to say okay, we know that this has to reach youth in our community, so let's reach directly out to the schools, let's reach out to the school teams, let's reach out to our faith communities in the city to help us spread around that message. I think that I'm very proud of some of the work that our communications team and us as a city have done over the last year plus in that space. I would say one of the greatest challenges that we've had, and something that I think that we need to continue to improve on, is reaching, in a similar vein, reaching our historically underserved populations in Watertown. You know, our schools have students speaking upwards of 50 plus languages. We as a city can certainly get much, much better than we currently are at offering services and opportunity and languages that are spoken at home, languages that are not English, and that's something that I've spent a lot of time on.
Tyler: 15:06
But one of the biggest challenges, to be totally frank, is the data on these things is quite scarce. Our US census is looking at county-based data as opposed to city-based data, and that becomes really challenging to make sure that we are getting our vital information out in the languages that are being spoken by our residents if we don't have a clear, clear picture as to what those languages totally are. So that's something that myself and our communications team are looking a lot at, and anybody that is watching this anybody here please spread around, if anybody calls our 311 department, they'll be able to get upwards of 240 plus different languages on the phone within seconds for any questions, any needs. Want to report a pothole? You're able to do that in whatever language it is that you speak, which is great. So we're getting there, but I would still consider it a challenge because we aren't anywhere close to where I'm hoping that we can get. Which I hope people will hang with us as we hopefully get to that point.
Steve: 16:06
Yeah, and just to piggyback off that a little bit, I think one of the problems is folks who are in kind of more local level government is just getting the word out for things that are important, that are happening, right. So if there's an MBTA meeting about a project in Cambridge or something like that, making sure, like part of my job is to make sure people know it. Part of it is, and it's a little self-serving because then say, oh, thanks for telling me, Steve. Right, that's what I want to hear. But it's still, it's important for people to know. Right, it's important to people to know when the red line is going to be down for a week. Right, we really need to know that information. And getting that out to people can really be a real challenge. Because people, mostly when they think of the news, they're watching CNN or they're reading the New York Times, even the Boston Globe, and they're not thinking about where do I get my really local neighborhood news very much. Unlike the city, I can't send things out with your tax bills or your water bill.
Steve: 16:57
I have to build those relationships one person at a time, one email address at a time, one phone call at a time. That's pretty challenging to be able to do, but I think I've been able to put together a pretty. Like I said, I do a newsletter and every newsletter I do has whatever we did in state government between the last newsletter and the current one. I make sure that everybody knows at the legislature at least. And that's something that I've really gotten a lot of positive feedback on doing because it's very difficult for you know, a civilian, to find out some of that information. What exactly did the House pass, you know, last week? Well, on Monday the House passed an extension to the COVID era rules that allow hybrid meetings, right, so we did that on Monday.
Dan: 17:37
It's good to know actually. Thank you, yeah.
Steve: 17:40
(Matt: Breaking news.) Yeah, breaking news on the. If you're hearing this on the podcast, it happened a while back. But yeah, and the Senate's probably going to do it tomorrow. But the reason I bring that up is most people don't follow kind of that day-to-day, what did the legislature actually do today? And if you read the Globe you'll maybe think that we don't do anything, or the Herald. But we do. We actually do do things. So getting that information out to people is really important to me and I think I've managed to try to give people that information and they have mostly appreciated it. Although at the bottom of my emails for those of you who are on my list if you're not on my list, come after me afterwards, I sometimes put a little like a treasure at the bottom hey, if you got this far in the list, you know, send me a note, and you know some people do. But anyway, so that's, and just just one more thing to push back on what you said earlier that you don't do news, you don't do stories, or you do stories. Well, you know I'm in politics. Stories are kind of the coin of the realm here. I rely on people's stories when I'm trying to move legislation forward or promote what I'm trying to do. So don't sell yourself short. That's some really important and powerful stuff that you deal in.
Matt: 18:47
Thanks. (Steve: Not to throw you off.) No, no, no, no, no, no. Yeah, I appreciate that. Yeah, so this is a thing for people. I do a lot of editing, so when you see me live sorry, I take some time to think, yeah. So what I kind of focus on, what I think I've succeeded with, obviously, is the stories, but also, even though I don't think of myself as news and now I might be news, I like to think that I'm trying to direct people to other people is what I'm doing. And so by telling their story and maybe hitting on some information, it's more that I want these people to reach out and meet these other people so they can get all the information they want or have these experiences that they want.
Matt: 19:27
And I think that's ultimately what I'm trying to do. And I think it's gone well so far and still experimenting. It's only been a year, so I'm still experimenting with lots of different ways of doing it, but that's the key way that I'm thinking about it is making people want to meet with other people. Because they can get so much more information in that in-person interaction than they will ever get even in listening to a 30-minute episode.
Tyler: 19:48
I think you're succeeding at that.
Matt: 19:51
Thank you. Cool, well, let's move on to the next one, which is kind of an interesting one. That is always a struggle, I feel like for me, but also, I'm sure, for you guys, is feedback, how you're kind of just talking about right. So how do you know that you're doing a good job? What is the feedback that you're getting and what feedback you wish you were getting about what you're doing?
Dan: 20:10
That's the biggest thing in my job that I think lacks is feedback. (Steve: You want some of mine.) We get feedback and it's mostly people saying we appreciate what, like you guys, appreciating what we do and broadcasting events and meetings to the community, making sure that people can stay informed by watching our channels. We don't get an, at least on the news side, I don't get a lot of really constructive criticism, or at least not as much as I'd like.
Dan: 20:39
There is out there in the ether, there is like actually an online survey, like a Google form that you can go and fill out and say like how much you watch, you know Watertown Cable News, how often do you watch? Do you watch it live? Do you watch it on the rebroadcast? You know what segments do you like, what don't you like, what do you wish there was more of? So there is a survey out there that I've tried to pump out into the community before, but it just never really caught traction.
Dan: 21:00
I did get some responses many years ago from a gentleman that hated that we had a weather report. Which I wholeheartedly agreed with him on, and I was like, yeah, we should stop it because it makes no sense to do, because by the time the show has been out for a day the weather forecast changed.
Dan: 21:18
So that was probably the best piece of constructive feedback I ever got was hey, stop doing the weather. So yeah, I do wish that we got more kind of constructive feedback. We do get some from the city level. You know city counselors who wonder if we could film a meeting a different way, or you know they'll give us some feedback. But on the news side, I do wish that I could have a better understanding of who was watching the show, what they were getting out of it and what they would want to see more of, because otherwise I'm just basing it on my own editorial opinion or what I want the show to be. But it'd be good to get more feedback of what residents would like to see in the news.
Charlie: 21:52
Yeah, I mean, I agree, it's sometimes frustrating. I think I probably get more than you do just because people will email me. I have the comments section, which isn't necessarily a direct reflection on what they're not always talking about what I'm doing, but people come up to me and it's nice to hear from people and sometimes they will give construction tips and stuff. You know, other than just like number of people reading, which I can kind of I can track, but even, but even that it's not clear. Like, do they read it just because they saw a headline or do they actually really want to read it? You know, do they like it afterwards? It's really hard to tell. But that's you know one of the reasons why I like to get out there is just to talk to people and they might be talking about the news they might be talking about. I just might not know them and just talk about their lives. Or they might be saying, hey, you should be doing this story or why aren’t you covering that. But yeah it is tough to kind of really get a handle on that.
Tyler: 22:30
Yeah, speaking from, the city gets a lot of feedback on a lot of things. And my title is the community engagement specialist. That means that feedback is gold in a way. I can use that and bring that to a department or bring that to a co-worker or colleague, or turn that around and bring that to a community member or stakeholder and say, hey, this is feedback we're getting, but I think this might be better suited or better fit into your organization or your work and can you help me out here. From a communication standpoint, I would say that so much of communications is testing, seeing how it goes, and then does it work? Okay, let's keep going with it. Okay, let's push the boundary a little bit more, let's try this out, and okay, we didn't like it. Let's move back. And you know, when I started here, I came from outside of government and government has a lot of rules, and so that took a little bit of time to kind of get a grasp on that. I think that we don't necessarily have a shortage of feedback, I would say.
Tyler: 23:30
But you know it's always interesting. I host Watertown Chats, which is basically like a coffee hour type event that I run maybe like once a month or so, and I hear a lot of people saying that these are great, these are fantastic. We love these and we do a lot of promotion around them. But then we host the events and we have, you know, a couple of people come by and you know I'll get 10, this is great, love that you're doing it. But maybe one person stop in over the course of two hours, and that's an interesting. You know, the lack of feedback and the lack of engagement there is an interesting. That's challenging from our perspective, of like, does this mean it's not working? Is this not the way that people want to be engaged? I would say that's an example of where the feedback is interestingly positive and people seem to like this idea of being able to walk into an open door and ask a question, but it's not always being seen in the output of the people coming and walking through the door to ask the question.
Tyler: 24:21
So how do we find out whether things are working? You know there's of course we can go through the statistics to see what's being looked at most online, but when we're getting out into the community and speaking with people and trying to create a very open opportunity for people to come in, that's where it gets a little bit more challenging to really see what's working and what's not. So it goes back to continuing to innovate the way we communicate, continuing to try new things, see what's working and, as I mentioned earlier, utilize our communications map, utilize organizations like the Mosesian, utilize Tia and the Community Foundation as much as we can to help us spread messaging around. That's always great. But, yeah, it's lovely getting the feedback. It's gold for me. But it doesn't mean that you're always getting the clearest picture on what that feedback is.
Steve: 25:08
So, as an elected official, you know feedback is kind of my, that's my job. If I stop listening to feedback from my constituents, then they'll send me the ultimate feedback in November and I'll have to find, you know, a real job to do finally. So it's really important and people have no trouble telling me you know what they think I'm doing right and what they think I'm doing wrong, at least over email or phone. To your point, though, the coffee hour, the chats that you do. So I do office hours three times a month. I do one in Cambridge, one in Watertown and then I do the Watertown Senior Center and we have a nice crew at the Senior Center and we all hang out for an hour and it's same group of people mostly, but we have a great conversation. But at those coffee hours you know the office hours, it can be the case where you know sometimes I'll get one person, sometimes I'll get 10, but there's no real rhyme or reason to it. And I think again, universally people are glad that we do that because they want to know that your city administration or your elected officials are out there in the community.
Steve: 26:06
I find them as an opportunity to bring people to a cafe or a place like the Four Seasons Cafe that just opened over on North Beacon. We had people come into that and it's just an excuse to say, hey, here's a new business, and if they come, they come. If they don't, they heard about a new place that opened right. So when I do those sorts of things, I try to keep it in mind that I'm not just doing it for me, but I'm doing it for the location where I'm doing it or for the greater people to know that a place exists, even especially the newer ones. So but I again I rely on feedback to do my job. The feedback that I get on the information that I put out is, you know, usually when they take the time to say they either say I'm doing well or they're you know or not so much. I don't get a lot of the middle feedback. It's usually a hot yes or a hot no. But that's, that's the job.
Matt: 26:56
Yeah, that's an interesting how do you get the middle of the sandwich of people to give feedback on anything, right. It seems like most people are getting the top of the sandwich and bottom of the sandwich, where’s the meat of it. Yeah, for me, I can see listens and I think this might even be more or along the lines of an article for Charlie like I don't know if someone listened to the first two minutes or if they listened for 45 minutes, so that's a little difficult to suss out there. But then also, yeah, I get a lot of the feedback of just people coming up to me and saying things, or I hear a story of you know, I was saying with the events where people are connecting, and that's the great feedback I get. I'd like to hear more of that, but that means I maybe have to try new things and I've tried a few different episode types and it's tough getting feedback on that stuff, right. So I kind of have to go with my gut feeling on that a lot and the few things that I do hear back on that. So if you've got any feedback tonight, let me know. And yeah, I think that's my thoughts on that.
Matt: 27:46
So let's try and wrap this up on kind of last two things here. We touched a lot on this already. So what do you think of the local news ecosystem that we have going on already, we've touched on that a lot, but how you interact with others. And also, what do you want to see in the future going forward with yourself or with some other thing to pop up within the community?
Dan: 28:07
You know, I think, kind of circling back to what we touched on earlier with Matt your kind of addition into you know, Charlie and I. We have the written word, we have the video and I think the third leg of kind of the information ecosystem that was kind of maybe missing, we didn't really realize it, was sort of what you're providing with the podcast and like the really in-depth personal stories that you're getting with people in the community. So I think the way that kind of the and even Tyler, the way that I think all of our organizations are kind of intertwining with you know, Charlie, you came in and filmed your show Inside Watertown on WCA-TV the other day. So that was you know, you interacting with us. Tyler, you and Matt come in once a month to do your update with Victoria. You guys have been doing in our studio. Steve, it's long overdue, but you come in every few months to give, and that's not your fault, that's my fault, to give an update about what's going on in the statehouse. So I think kind of the way that we all sort of interact and feed off of each other is really powerful.
Dan: 29:03
I don't know how many communities have this kind of working relationship with the various information outlets in their community, especially since a lot of cities don't have newspapers. Speaking for public access TV, not every city and town in Massachusetts has a station that does the capacity of what Watertown Cable Access does. I know some cities that they have stations that will film city council and maybe one or two football games the entire season and that's the extent of it. And then what the city has done to sort of enhance their communications department, where you know I work with Tyler, you know Jeanne, the social media coordinator, you know I work with her a lot to kind of coordinate her sharing things that we post on social media. So yeah, just generally speaking, it is just, I think a really healthy just sort of evolution of how we all work together. One thing I'd like to see and I guess I'll put some public pressure on Tyler over here because I'd really like him to start a talk show at WCA-TV where he brings in the city manager or the city council president. Just do a short update on what's going on in the city council. I think that'd be a really cool thing to have just a short little update. That's one thing that I would love to see, I guess. I'm sorry, Tyler.
Tyler: 30:10
No, it's okay. It's okay, I'm sure we can make something like that happen I'm sure. I know there's interest.
Charlie: 30:16
Yeah, I consider Dan kind of like a co-worker almost or like a partner, where we, when I started, there was the Tab and they were active and even then I was collegial even though we were competitors. But Dan is much more of a you know we see each other so often, he can kind of help me out with a video or a picture and hopefully vice versa. And, like you said, I have a show that I do with Bob Airasian and then I helped out Clyde Younger in his podcast last week too, and I like to sort of lend a hand. I mean, I think it's we're a small town, we're a small media, I think we're trying to do as much as we can and it kind of helps to be able to combine forces. So I think that’s been great. You know in terms of additions, I don’t know I mean Matt, you are a great addition.
Charlie: 30:53
And you’ve tried to do not just your little local interviews, but the creative chats and other things that you know, it just kind of boggles my mind when I see how much you're trying to do, because it can be difficult. In addition, you know, Bob and I are also part of the Watertown Business Coalition which there has been like in the past, like a big sort of line between news and business and all that. But you know, being a one man show and I run my own business, I consider myself both, so I try to lend my hand there. I think it's just a good way to kind of bring everyone together as a community. But that can sometimes, you know, it can get a little awkward if I have to do something that people don't want me to write about or something like that. But generally it works out and I think I love how the city has been adding more, because it could be frustrating in the past just trying to get information quickly and Tyler and Jeanne can really help me out and I appreciate that.
Tyler: 31:41
Yeah and I would say that our city hall and government functions better when there is a communications ecosystem around it. So you both, and Matt, you as well, you know you all make my life significantly easier. And I do want to take a moment to appreciate the fact that every single board and commission meeting, every single city council meeting, can be watched every single night, every week. That the coverage, Charlie, that you are doing of these meetings and of these events and of the sports in high school and getting stories. Then, Matt, speaking to seemingly every person that is in this city for the podcast and getting them comfortable as well. When we sat down it took two minutes and I was already speaking far more comfortably than I thought I was going to when you put a microphone in front of you. But city government really does. You know, I just came back from MMA, which is like the, it's known as like the Mass municipal prom. It's like every single city is there and it's a big deal and everybody sends a cohort of people that work for the city. So we went and I was in a communications chat and the question was who has a local paper or local news outlet? And way less than half the room raised their hand. So, having the opportunity to, the one of the first things I do every morning is I open up my you know, Google Chrome and I type in Watertown News and I just see what is the chatter right now. So I'm incredibly grateful for the communications ecosystem that we have.
Tyler: 33:02
I would say in terms of growth, I think that there's some growth within City Hall that we can do specifically around really complex issues, or maybe not issues, but complex documents, topics. Think about our city manager always says that the story of our city is told in the budget. However, the budget is also 300 pages of tables. So we can do better at communicating what is actually happening with your tax dollars, what we are trying to do, what we are trying to accomplish because not only this year, but the budget typically looks ahead five years in some areas with our capital planning.
Tyler: 33:36
That's something that I really am going to be focusing on and want to focus on over the next several months and making sure that people have a full understanding of kind of what they can be excited about moving forward. And I hope that us doing that within City Hall I know that that will end up leaking out for people to have a full understanding of when Charlie posts a new article, they may have already heard about that through something that we put on City Hall and when Dan has another talk show that they have an understanding of kind of what they're tapping into or what they're clicking play on, and when Rep Owens includes it at the bottom of his newsletter, below that little fun tidbit asking people to send him an email, that they have a little bit of that understanding. So that's something that I would like to see kind of putting pressure on myself there over the next several months and also hopefully you'll be able to see it sometime soon.
Steve: 34:24
Yeah, and just to echo what Tyler said, I mean having the ecosystem that we have is kind of rare. Watertown is a wonderful place, but it's also kind of right in the corner between a couple of really big giants, right. So it's real easy to find out information about Boston. I bet if you went around down the street and said who's the mayor of Boston, most people would know. And if you ask them who's the city council president, no one would have a clue. If you just asked a civilian in Watertown, right.
Steve: 34:53
So having a local news ecosystem dedicated to the work that is going on here in the city and the interests of the people who live in the city, and having it not just online but also on video, and also the city trying its best to push out that information and now doing deep dives into community members. I mean, I hate to get political, but we really need to be knit together as a community, especially now when there's a lot of forces out there that are trying to divide people and put them into groups and buckets and separate them, physically sometimes these days.
Steve: 35:29
So having an ecosystem that brings people together, that lets people know what's going on locally in their neighborhood, the things that they care about, the people that they care about, is so important. And I think it's becoming more rare throughout Massachusetts, maybe even the country, as local news kind of dries up. So I really appreciate the work that has been done to get to this point. I think if I were to, you know, wave a magic wand, I would say let's have more voices, more different kinds of voices, some of those you know underrepresented communities that you were talking about being hard to reach. Love to hear more from folks like that. And you know, again, that's you put pressure on yourself, so I put pressure on myself too to help reach out to people, because that's my job, right. If I'm doing something, I need to let people know about it, especially if I'm trying to represent them at the statehouse.
Matt: 36:16
Yeah, so I want to just say how easy it has been for me to get into this ecosystem. This is Watertown-wide and everyone in this room has just been so friendly and welcoming to sitting down and opening up and having these conversations and wanting to know about it. It's a very curious community. It's a very welcoming community and it does feel unique. I've heard stories of other people be in different communities around here and not being able to get involved and having struggles with that. And Watertown you really can. So if you want to start a podcast and get 50 guests in a year, you can get 50 people who want to sit down and talk with you. It's amazing how open this community is. I really appreciate that and appreciate how you guys have welcomed me. And it's not a competition. There's no competition up here. It's great. In terms of stuff that I look forward to. It's been interesting how easy it was to add an audio thing to this. I'm curious about what other things could be added in some medium that we haven't had yet. Like I don't know, is there some some TikToker that could take over and get a whole new demographic interested in what's going on locally. I don't know. It seems like there's room for something else too, and I'm curious to see who takes that up in the future.
Matt: 37:28
Me personally, I'm looking to do more events and stuff, because I think kind of what you were talking about. I want to rely less nationally on a lot of things. Like I was talking with Doug the other day, I was joking with him about having a Watertown Wall Street, like where you can invest in local businesses. Like how much stuff can you do locally that you don't have to rely on, like getting your entertainment from afar, come to the Mosesian, get your local entertainment here. Just so much of that, I feel like the in-person connection, being related to the people that are in your community and getting as many of your needs satisfied locally, I think is something that we need and some people are realizing and we should do more of so. And I think all this helps with that, helps us know what's going on, helps us meet these people. So, yeah, is there any other closing thoughts I didn't hit on that you guys wanted to get out there, or we can wrap it up.
Tyler: 38:18
Yeah, thank you and thank you all. Like, our lives become a lot easier communicating out when people are actually reading and listening to it. So thank you and any help you can give in spreading around all of everything that we're doing. We're very grateful for it.
Matt: 38:32
Well, I got a few more thoughts for you afterwards, but let them get off, so go ahead. Thank you guys.
Guest: 38:44
Can I ask a question? Can I ask a question?
Matt: 38:46
Sure.
Guest: 38:47
Do you think we need print media? Do you think we need a local Watertown newspaper again? I mean, some communities are starting up local newspapers in a nonprofit format and trying to create it all over again from the ground up. What do you think about that?
Matt: 39:10
Anyone got thoughts on print?
Charlie: 39:13
I've been approached and I've been. It's, to boil it down, probably not. Just because you know there are some places I've heard Newton has done it and Belmont's in the process of trying to do it. Belmont raised something like half a million dollars to start their organization to just because it requires, like I couldn't do it, like it's significant.
Charlie: 39:30
You're talking about adding, like you know, I probably do, you know, if you think of my jobs like a writer, editor, photographer, selling ads occasionally. But you'd have to add on, like just putting it out on the paper, getting it printed, getting it. It's hard to find printers, like I'm not even sure where the Globe prints anymore, I think where like the Tab used to print is gone, I believe, and then you have to have distributed and it all costs money. And because there was an effort recently to try and do it and I was always willing to help, like use my stories and stuff. But for me personally I don't think see it as a possibility. And what I've heard is like people say they want it, they would say they want it, they say they want it, but they don't do it. You know you could probably get ads to cover the cost of the printing and stuff, but that'd just be to cover that. Like I struggle just to make enough to kind of just keep it going so. But if anyone wants to do it I’m willing to help out, is the very long answer.
Steve: 40:19
Yeah, and I'll just say that I know there are a couple of nonprofit, local nonprofits that are trying this and neighboring towns and around. I'd love to see how that plays out, cause it's hard. I mean, I don't know how you do what you do online, but it is hard to run a physical newspaper and there's a reason why there's not that many of them anymore. You know it'd be exciting to have one. But even you know, in Cambridge the Cambridge Chronicle is, I think, the oldest local newspaper in the US and it just again prints recycled USA Today content now, there's no Cambridge news in it, hardly. So they've got a group, a guy who has a website. They do a weekly kind of events calendar physically. But that's a struggle for him to even get out and you know he went to the city and said, hey, if media is important to you will the city, you know Cambridge has got is a well-resourced community. Can the city help me with my paper? That's a little weird, right? Because if I'm covering the city council and the city council is funding me, like you know, that could work. It could work. But there's a kind of an inherent conflict of interest in there. So there is, you know, I'm interested in seeing different models because I do think that local news is really, really important and print can be a very important part of it. But I want to see what those other communities do work, to see what models can be replicated, and particularly in a city as small as we are. You know, we're not as big as Newton, Newton's what twice as big, three times, (almost three times), yeah. So if you can't get the circulation numbers up, it could be very difficult to do it in a way that you know pays for itself.
Charlie: 41:51
Actually the one area I thought that could be, almost and going back to what Matt was asking about, like finding a different niche might be like something more like a monthly magazine. This would be, you know, maybe a long-form news thing, have lots of photos, have like people contribute, like have sections like arts and stuff like that, because that's something I think that people would want to have and might be willing to pay a little bit more for, but it's just expensive, unfortunately
Matt: 42:10
There is a zine culture at the library too.
Charlie: 42:11
Yeah, yeah, maybe get the library onboard.
Guest: 42:15
Can I ask one more follow-up question?
Matt: 42:16
Go ahead.
Guest: 42:17
Basically, it goes to what you guys are all talking about, who funds each one of you. I mean, who pays your bills, so that you can be telling us all of these things that we need to hear.
Matt: 42:30
So for the podcast, Roberta asked who funds each of our operations.
Dan: 42:34
For Watertown Cable, it's mostly Comcast. Basically, there's a law that mandates cable companies have to set aside a certain percentage of their profits to fund public access TV stations. So we actually renegotiate what that number is with Comcast every 10 years. That's actually coming up in a couple months. People might start hearing about that soon. We'll be asking people to actually come and speak on our behalf to Comcast to emphasize why we're important in the community. So, yeah, it's mostly Comcast. And then we do have underwriting, we don't have a lot of that and donations, but it's mostly Comcast.
Charlie: 43:07
Mine is mostly through my advertisers, but I do get some very nice donations. And I have a Patreon page, which some people write checks, but through Patreon you're going to have a monthly, it charges you every month and that's been another way to make a few dollars.
Tyler: 43:19
I work for the city, so all of you, I suppose yeah.
Steve: 43:25
Yeah, everything that I put out is paid for with campaign dollars, so it's all raised. Every dime I do is raised by me and reported on the OCPF website. So if you want to see where I get my money, it's all there.
Guest 2: 43:40
Can I ask a question? I didn’t know if this was a Q&A.
Matt: 43:43
It is now. I'm going to bring the mic around.
Guest 2: 43:51
Thanks, thanks. I'm an East Watertown resident. I'm also a communications director for a national children's health nonprofit, and one thing we think about a lot, especially in this second Trump administration, is media literacy and teaching that to kids and also adults. And I'm curious, from your perspectives, where you feel like it's most appropriate for that responsibility to lie? Is that, I mean, I'm in a nonprofit that's trying to fill that role, but should it be something that's taught in schools? And what about adults who maybe haven't gotten that in schools but are now trying to navigate this news ecosystem?
Tyler: 44:18
I would say, of course schools are a great resource in terms of actually getting youth at very formative ages to build those media literacy skills and online literacy and all the literacies that are, you know there's more than just media literacy as well. But I know I can speak that we have run media literacy classes for seniors at our senior center, which is always a good resource.
Tyler: 44:39
We have sometimes our IT director will come and speak to it. And then also organizations like yourself and nonprofits are amazing stakeholder resources that cities like Watertown and many cities and towns around the Commonwealth and the country always love kind of tapping into. And bringing organizations into schools or bringing them into community events and hosting some sort of educational opportunity. So I would say to put the onus on a single location would actually be a poor approach to spreading media literacy around our community. I would say there are levels of literacy that need to happen at all ages, especially as we have this incredibly involving information bubble, I guess I'll call it, in the ways that information is coming at us each and every day in different ways as well. So the answer is everybody kind of plays their own role. But especially when we see an opportunity to kind of put programming into our existing institutions or existing organizations, I think that it always serves well to utilize the people that are actually experts in the field, especially.
Steve: 45:47
And I'll just add one more thing on the media literacy. I think it's very important because there's a lot of junk food in our information environment right now and some of that is being spread by bad actors, some of it is being spread by people who are just doing it, you know, for the lulz Right. So it's. (Matt: That’s the technical term.) It is yeah, it's an Internet term, you're on the Internet. (Tyler: Media literacy.) But I do think it's very important, but also it needs to be done well, because poorly done media literacy is just knee-jerk skepticism of everything. And that sort of thing leads to oh well, what they're really not telling you is this, right. You can't believe what you read in the New York Times, because you know. So I think it's really important to have it be kept up, and I think it's really important to have it be done well, so that we can, you know, we give people the tools to figure out what's true, and but we don't give them the impression that everything is false. Because there is an objective truth out there, at least I like to think so.
Guest 3: 46:50
Well, I don't know if it's a question or a comment, but, as an artist, and this may be a little off the topic this evening, but you're all men and you're all wearing brown shoes. So am I, but that's just an artist speaking out loud. But I think that we're not tapping into the youth. I think we should have children be a part of this. I don't know how you would go about doing it, but you would tap into all of the different schools that we have and get them involved in it. I also think that we need some women involved in it. I think the majority of the people in the audience are women, and it would be nice to have a diverse group on a panel. Not necessarily this panel, this panel is fine. But I think that it's important to look around and see who is not represented when you're putting things together and make sure that we do that and we can do that.
Guest 3: 47:51
We're a rich community, and maybe not so much in bucks, but we're not begging. We're not like some of the powerful towns that next door and everything, but we don't have to brag. We wear our swagger by the way, we do things here in Watertown. And I don't know if that's a question or a comment, but it's an observation. And I think that we can address that, especially, well, all of it, but children are important and I would really love to see children be part of the TV part of it, be part of the news and feature them. And find out how they deal with conflict and really say, oh, you were fighting, what were you arguing about, or whatever. And I think the more we get our children involved, the richer our community would be. Thank you.
Tyler: 48:40
I'll add in, thanks, I appreciate it, Archy, It's good to see you again. Thinking about, to your point about getting youth involved, that's something I think about almost every single day with the city, especially with city process.
Tyler: 48:52
One of our city councilors said that one of the most important things that we do is we get the process right. If we get the process right, that means that we are getting the input, we are getting the opinions, we are hearing the feedback that we need to hear. And part of that process needs to include our young voices as well. So, with my role, I can say that I'm communicating with the schools every single week, thinking about moving forward when we have big projects, when we have big decisions to make, how can we set up round tables with youth groups to try and get them involved in the decisions that are being made in the parks that are around town or the programs that we're delivering. So that's something that I'm definitely thinking about a lot and that they absolutely should be part of that conversation. And I can assure that's something that we're working very, very hard on.
Guest 4: 49:32
Hi, my name is Liz Padula. I own Artemis Yoga. And it's so wonderful to see this fabric of everybody coming together. It's like a real, in this art place, real tapestry. So my question is, so is there a strategy with the city, particularly to welcome new residents with this breadth of communication, to make the residents informed of what all the available information channels are? Because maybe the realtor has a handbook or a thing, but oftentimes new residents, it's really hard, they have to word of mouth, but is there a strategy for new residents to understand what the information sources are or proactively share that with them?
Tyler: 50:17
Love that question, partially because it came up in a meeting that I was in last week, so it's very, very pertinent and it's something that we've been talking about a lot. So we just completed, the city just completed what was a over a year long health and human service study. And as a part of that study and consultant and experts in the field identified that the digital and the physical front door to get services and understand the programs that are available to residents, and especially new residents, was just not clear, frankly. And it's something that we just posted a human service director position with the city, which is great. So they're going to be looking at that specifically. But also, as a communications team, we've been having detailed conversations about developing welcome packets that address that exact thing of, you need to contact 311, here are all the reasons that you would contact 311. You need to contact 911, here are all the reasons that you need to contact 911. Make sure you call the right line, which is a promotion that we're doing at the moment. Here are all the local news.
Tyler: 51:16
So, getting into a lot of those details, a lot of you know there are frameworks that other cities use. I was just on Somerville's website a couple of weeks ago and they have, a moving to Somerville? Here's a 15 step guide of what you need to make sure that you're doing. And we started sharing that around as a communications team. So does it exist right now? Not as cleanly as it should. But is that something that I anticipate will exist at some point? Yes, I do. So. That front door is so important, especially when you're looking at city government, because you want people to feel comfortable to find the resources and the programs that they need through the city. And whether that is that virtual front door, that physical front door being able to go in, which you know part of opening up that door is hosting those chat sessions right. So that welcome pack, it's something that we've talked about and it's something that I would anticipate that there's going to be at least a version of at some point here in the not too distant future.
Guest 5: 52:11
Thank you to all of our panelists. This has been a great kind of landscape view of our very formal media channels and some of our official media channels. And, to Archy's point, we have a lot of informal channels. I think the number of newsletters when I send out a press release, I have no idea who to send it to, so I don't have any consistent process. Charlie always gets it, Dan always gets it, and then I go who's got a really active newsletter? And sometimes I remember everybody and sometimes I don't. And I think that that's another way that event information gets out. And so for me I'm listening kind of what's the difference between news? What's the difference between events? What's the difference between story? Where's analysis? A lot of our analysis right now is some very thoughtful and some kind of just yelling at each other online that's well moderated, for which I'm very, very grateful. I mean, it gives people a chance to we understand everybody's viewpoints and I appreciate the very respectful moderation that allows that to happen in both our public meetings and in our online discourse. But I think there's some ways to bring in the voices of our youth by asking how do they get their information, what channels are they on, and looking at some of the other digital channels, newsletter channels might be another interesting panel conversation.
Guest 5: 53:22
That was one point, and the other point is that I think, going to George's comment, that the story of our city is told in our budget. This is something that I've said to people before that when we look at our city budget, at least half of it is going to the schools. Not uncommon for communities in Massachusetts. But there's also a value statement. It's a value statement of what's important to us and then, when we add into that, where are we putting our philanthropy in the community in terms of arts, in terms of youth sports leagues, in terms of children's theater, all the other places where we put children first, where we volunteer our time, we put children first.
Guest 5: 53:58
So when I think about the story of our city, that's a story we haven't figured out how to tell yet. Some of it's in the budget, some of it's in how we spend our time, some of it's in terms of where we give our money philanthropically, some of it's in our history and some of it is told by the values that we have taken the time to tell at the very front of our charter. So I think, as we kind of are in this very unique moment of community building, that's one of the stories I would love to hear told, because I think that will be important for all of our institutions and our businesses and our city government to be able to say welcome to Watertown, this is who we are. And there's never going to be one answer to that right. There's going to be lots of different answers and that's okay, because I think we will understand the values where it is grounded. So, for what it's worth.
Tyler: 54:45
I would just say Tia, the informalness of some of the way that we spread around our news, that is critical to everything that we do in the city. And I agree with you, there's a new newsletter that pops up all the time. And to your point about kind of telling the story of our city, sure, the story of the capital C city is, at least in part, is told through our budget.
Tyler: 55:09
But I think the beauty of this community also is that the number of voices that we have in the storytelling of our city which is fantastic. You know, to give a plug to Watertown Helps Out, that is part of the story. Building an ecosystem of volunteerism where people feel as though that they do want to take part in something like that and take part in change and improvement in Watertown, like being able to really boost up and highlight examples like that is just as much a part of our city as anything else. So I commend you and a lot of our stakeholders that are actively doing a lot of the work like that every single day.
Steve: 55:43
Just to do the informals, the where do I send the press release? I feel your pain. I feel your pain on that because when I need information out, I send it to Charlie. Charlie always gets it. But do I put it out on Instagram? On Facebook? On which Facebook page? On you know, off Twitter now, for political reasons. But you know, what part of social media can I get my information out the best? And that isn't always easy to know right and it seems to change, like a lot of those algorithms. You know you think you figured out how to get information to people on Facebook and then the next time you try nobody sees this picture. Maybe I didn't put enough cats in it. If I put a bunch of cats in this one, do people see it? And then maybe it works for a couple months and then later you filled your page with cats and nobody's looking anymore. So it's difficult to get a hold of people, especially in a diffuse information environment like we have these days.
Matt: 56:34
I think that speaks a little bit to the in-person stuff too, because then you don't have to figure out an algorithm, right? You can just tell people face-to-face. That algorithm is always set in stone, right? And, Tyler, I know the city is working on the neighborhood programs, right? And that's a way to give information to a specific leader of a neighborhood, and then they can disseminate the information too, which seems like that's a great project to lead that way, right.
Tyler: 56:55
Yep, definitely, and we'll hopefully have more to share on that as it begins to really take form. But that'll be exciting to be able to kind of lean on our neighbors connecting with neighbors and building those community connections. And yeah, that's always something that, especially our Live Well program, to connect with Live Well, they are always looking at finding ways to connect with community and that's just one example of it.
Guest 6: 57:16
Hi, I'm Gabriella. Matt teaches my fiancee guitar, so that's why we're here. Yeah, so we've been here about two years and I guess I'm not youth, I'm in my 20s and the first thing I did when I moved here was I visited the library and I subscribed to the library newsletter. I feel like the Watertown Public Library is such like a vibrant hub for community and they share so much information on their website, like in their calendar and in their newsletter, about like lots of different events that are happening. Lots of different like businesses or local experts will come and do panels or there's like coffee chats, and they also share stuff about local news. So I don't know, that's all I had to say. I'm sure you guys already know all about the library, but it's such an awesome like vibrant hub for community, especially like younger and more just like diverse group of people, I think. Yeah.
Matt: 58:12
Yes, I would have liked to have the library here, but they're having a big event themselves tonight. But yes, they're a key part of this community, obviously. All right. Well, thank you guys for answering some more questions. Thank you.
Matt: 58:29
So that's it for the live podcast panel I did at the anniversary event. Thank you again to everyone who came out. And to answer a little bit of a question that I didn't answer in the event there, of how I make money, I have officially made this a business this year and I'm trying to support this. So if you do want to help out this project, you can head on over to littlelocalconversations.com and on the very top of the website, if you're on your desktop or you click on the menu if you're on your phone, there is a support local conversation button there and there you can give a one time donation. You can sign up to give monthly donations, and anything to help support this project would be greatly appreciated. I really want to make this my full focus and to be able to continue to do that, I need to make it financially viable. So I'm also trying to take some sponsors now too. So any businesses out there who want to sponsor I'm trying to keep it to anyone who's been on the podcast. So you have to be a podcast guest first so people know your deeper story. But yes, I'm trying to do this all in a fun way. So what I'm calling the people who sign up to support on a monthly basis I have a few of those so far, calling them little local friends, and I'm trying to think of a fun way to do something with those people. So you want to sign up for it to be a little local friend, and then, if you have any ideas for what you might like out of being one of those members, I'm pondering on that, but let me know if you have any ideas. Anyway, I wanted to point that out because as we mentioned in this conversation, I think having these conversations with people throughout the city and sharing them so that people can find out what's going on in their community. I think it's important and so if you want to help support that, again, you can click that support local conversation button on the website. Greatly appreciate it. Or if you have any questions, reach out to me, matt, at littlelocalconversations.com. Also, I do have a newsletter as well, so if you want to sign up for that, you can sign up for that on the website.
Matt: 1:00:14
Send that out once a week just with updates from the podcast, events, new episodes and such. And to wrap up with some thank yous. I gave a bunch out at the event, but thank you to the Mosesian Center for the Arts for hosting the event. Proceeds from the event went to the Mosesian Center for the Arts and the Watertown Community Foundation, so thanks for people who came out and donated towards those causes. And thank you to Elan Rohde of Campolongo Cookie Company, who has been on the podcast, who donated cookies for the event as well. All right, and now for my usual thank yous that are as equally as important. The Watertown Cultural Council has given me a grant this year to help support the podcast, so I want to give them a thank you and the appropriate credit, which is this program is supported in part by a grant from the Watertown Cultural Council, a local agency, which is supported by the Mass Cultural Council, a state agency. Find out more about them at watertownculturalcouncil.org and massculturalcouncil.org.
Matt: 1:01:03
I also want to give a big shout out to Doug Orifice and Arsenal Financial, a sponsor of the podcast. Doug's been on the podcast himself, he was the first guest, and I also did a Watertown trivia episode to celebrate his sponsorship with Arsenal Financial. Go back and listen to that. It's a little fun episode. And Arsenal Financial is a financial planning business that helps people close to retirement, busy families, and small business owners. So check them out at arsenalfinancial.com if you're interested. And last shout out goes to the Watertown Business Coalition, promotional partner. They're a nonprofit organization here in Watertown. It's bringing businesses and people together to help strengthen the community. Find out more about them at watertownbusinesscoalition.com. They have great networking and community events as well, so check out their website to see what's coming up. So that's it, until next time, take care.
