Charlottesville Community Engagement

What will the podcast edition be like in 2026? This particular edition features a set of stories of things that happened between December 15 and January 7, stories that have already gone out in Charlottesville Community Engagement but not yet in sonic form! This edition has already aired on WTJU at 6 a.m. on January 10. The idea was to send this out yesterday, but there are eddies in the space-tim...

December 29 is upon us and this is perhaps the final sonic edition of Charlottesville Community Engagement for the year. This certainly is the antepenultimate day of 2025, a year in which there is still much to say in the coming week or so before 2026 begins to find its identity. In any case, today there are four editions of stories that have already gone out in newsletter form but are now assembl...

December 22, 2025 has arrived and so has this sonic edition of Charlottesville Community Engagement. Many of the longer versions of stories are produced as if they are going to air on the radio, and for this edition two have already done so! The other two have not, but will be among the stories that may be chosen for the December 27 edition that will air on WTJU at 6 a.m. Between now and then the...

Why not start a week off with a podcast edition of Charlottesville Community Engagement? There are likely many answers why not with a primary one being that it is atypical for such a program to be sent out through this feed on a Monday morning. Perhaps a better question is why produce audio versions of this newsletter at all? The answer to that is simply just to take a listen and hear for yourself...

This week, WTJU is holding their Classical Marathon which means that there will be no radio version of Charlottesville Community Engagement . Yet, the production of the newsletter often depends on harvesting audio recordings of meetings. I’m Sean Tubbs, publisher and president of Town Crier Productions , and I’ve been chopping up sound into stories for over thirty years now. This podcast version f...

What does it mean that there is a Friday podcast edition of Charlottesville Community Engagement? In case anyone asks, an explanation: This newsletter began in July 2020 as a podcast as a next phase of work I began at the beginning of the pandemic in March 2020. In the spring of 2024, I began producing a radio program for WTJU and decided to separate that production into a separate process. Now it...

This time the podcast is the same file as the radio show that airs on WTJU, complete with public service announcements and continuity befitting a program that goes out over broadcast signal at a specific time. For the sake of the holiday, I have made this the November 29, 2025 edition. This is the 333rd day of the year, a fact that may or may not have any significance but sounds like a good thing...

Written editions of Charlottesville Community Engagement often begin with a historical anecdote to mark the day and tie stories to a greater sense of the world. But what about this newsletter’s history? * The first November 22 edition came out in 2021 as you can see and hear here . * The November 22 version from 2023 was the only one made that week. Go look ! * Last year? November 22 rounded out a...

Time again for another sonic edition of Charlottesville Community Engagement, a newsletter and podcast that seeks to capture at least some of what happens in local and regional government. The timestamp for this one is the 312th day of the year 2025, otherwise known as November 8. I’m Sean Tubbs, glad to bring you another set of stories that went out this morning on WTJU. Why not send them out aga...

When in the course of human events it becomes necessary for one newsletter to produce an audio version, than this shall be what happens. As in, this a stand-alone audio edition of Charlottesville Community Engagement, a newsletter produced by Town Crier Productions with information about growth, development, government, and the occasional attempt at humor. I’m Sean Tubbs, encouraging readers to be...

Today’s sponsor is Piedmont Master Gardeners: Now accepting applications for their 2026 training class . Apply by December 1, 2025 No study of American history or macroeconomics would leave out the impact played by the Great Crash of the New York Stock Exchange of 1929 which culminated on Black Tuesday, 96 years ago today. Stock prices had continued to increase throughout the Roaring Twenties but...

For this October 24, 2025 podcast edition, there are two anecdotes from sporting history worth noting. For one, Sheffield F.C. began operations on this day in 1857. Though they are in the eighth league from the top of English football, they’re the oldest professional club still in operation. Flash forward to 1992 when the Toronto Blue Jays became the first Canadian team to win the world series? Wi...

Many stories on Charlottesville Community Engagement are made because they are a result of listening to a public meeting and chopping what is said into a narrative intended to let people know what took place. This newsletter began as an attempt at a radio newscast on July 13, 2020 and has gone through many iterations. This is the second podcast this week and steps are being taken behind the scenes...

Is there a method to the madness that is Charlottesville Community Engagement? Like a complex solar system with bodies dancing to a gravity not fully understood, there is sometimes a need to break programming and produce an audio version mid-week. This October 15, 2025 edition is required because at least one of the stories will be obsolete at the end of this day. So, here he goes: * Albemarle Sup...

The calendar now reads 10-10, which is CB Code for Standing By. That’s how Charlottesville Community Engagement remains most of the time, waiting to report whatever it is that a one-person information outlet can put together for a growing number of subscribers. The goal is to produce one audio version a week, and this is that. I’m Sean Tubbs, and I began my professional career in public radio thir...

Today’s edition is sponsored by the Ragged Mountain Running and Walking Shop September 30 is the final day of the federal fiscal New Year and one version of today’s Charlottesville Community Engagement could perhaps have been about how this region might be affected by a federal shutdown. Each edition of this newsletter could be a lot of different things, but what gets selected is usually a matter...

We have reached the end of another week here at Charlottesville Community Engagement and all that is left to do is put together an audio version using the stories already told. Listening might become habit-forming if you have an interest in discussions about the future, and if you want to spot the mistakes. Is this the one where I leave in the curse words? Tune in! If not, this edition also serves...

“National Public Radio will serve the individual: it will promote personal growth; it will regard the individual differences among men with respect and joy rather than derision and hate.” Thus begins a document written by Bill Siemering in 1969 when the federal government was investing in public broadcasting. Charlottesville Community Engagement is a newsletter and podcast that is not public media...

Generally the audio version of Charlottesville Community Engagement comes out on a Friday or a Saturday, but due to a series of factors, this time around non-radio listeners can hear it on a Monday. We’re in a time when so much is happening all at once, but this particular week there needed to be a break, an eddy in the space-time continuum. I’m Sean Tubbs, and here are the items you’re going to h...

There is a different gravity to holidays weeks as the routine is challenged in exchange for the illusion of a day off. Or at least, that’s definitely the case with this edition of Charlottesville Community Engagement produced at the end of a truncated week in which a lot seems to have happened. I’m Sean Tubbs, and if you’re a skeptic of the audio, I still recommend listening to the first story tod...

There are perhaps more than two ways to experience Charlottesville Community Engagement, but the audio edition is one of the ones that I know about. I’m Sean Tubbs, a journalist who got his professional start as an intern at a public radio station in Roanoke thirty years ago. Before that I spent a couple of years at a student newspaper at Virginia Tech. Somehow all of that led to this time in 2025...

Once more into the breach we go, though we’re not headed for battle but for another bout of audio stories collected and packaged as the Charlottesville Community Engagement podcast. This is an element of Town Crier Productions , a one-person information outlet created in 2020 to provide me, Sean Tubbs, with a way to do what I love best: Write stories that may seem obscure until you realize I’m wri...

A glimpse behind the scenes as this audio edition of Charlottesville Community Engagement begins. These introductory paragraphs are often nothing more than text that serves to begin a program that sounds a lot like public radio but isn’t public radio. Instead, they are audio versions of some of the stories you might have read complete with the voices of the people quoted! If you’ve not heard one o...

The time has come for another audio edition of Charlottesville Community Engagement. Or at least it is time for me to produce one. I’m Sean Tubbs, the publisher at Town Crier Productions , an extravagant name for a company that describes the kind of journalism I produce as often as I can. I got my start in public radio and use audio from meetings to fuel my reporting. In this edition: * UVA Board...

Program note: Every Saturday at 6 a.m., an audio version of this newsletter airs on WTJU. The copy for this newsletter is the for the one that aired today Good morning and welcome to another archive edition of Charlottesville Community Engagement for August 2, 2025. I’m Sean Tubbs, the publisher at Town Crier Productions . For the past five years, I’ve been writing stories about the community from...