JaxLookout Redux

After retiring from an almost 3 decade career in private philanthropy in summer 2018, I and a small group of friends created JaxLookout. Our intent was to write pieces on local public issues that require citizens to engage with elected and appointed officials in a meaningful way. We had modest success, and when we decided to close Lookout, we were reaching roughly 500 local readers.

We posted important pieces on topics that included the open government movement, area flooding, juvenile justice, downtown development, and Jacksonville’s city budget, especially its support or lack thereof of quality of life issues.

We helped readers know how to learn about critical local issues and share their opinions with those officials making public decisions.

Despite our success, life intervened. One of us died and two of us moved away.

Nonetheless, friends tell me that they hunger for ways to engage with their elected and appointed officials—not with a flip or nasty comment on social media but in a thoughtful way.

Our community is served by a shrinking cadre of dedicated, hardworking well-informed and well-educated journalists. Times-Union reporters continue to do yeoman’s work; The Florida Star, The Tributary, WJCT’s Jax Today, Channel Four and First Coast Connect among others all serve to inform the local citizenry of what’s happening.

Designed to inform, these publications are absolutely vital to the health of our local democracy.

Nonetheless, citizens hunger for mechanisms that help them organize and engage.

The mechanisms we have at our disposal—a three minute comment at a city council meeting or public hearing, voting once every four years, a letter to the editor, a response to a political poll, a comment on social media—simply don’t cut it.

JaxLookout Redux, or just “Redux” for short, will try to help folks engage.

We expect to post a weekly reflection on local issues that will include links to critical information, a simple poll, and recommendations on how to get involved.

Hope springs eternal.