As a proud parent of two, I’ve celebrated a lot of milestone birthdays over the years. My children’s birthdays are times I honor not just their growth but my own.

Today feels a bit like that. It is Signal Cleveland’s 2nd birthday. We launched our website on Nov. 15, 2022. 

In the months before that, a small team of us were tasked with naming, branding and launching the newsroom. Brainstorming on a late night text thread led to our name, a tribute to inventor, entrepreneur and Ohioan Garrett Morgan. The symbol used on Freedom Quilts to denote Cleveland inspired our logo. 

After that, we hired unusual suspects — journalists, community builders, Documenters and more — organized around the question: How might we flip the traditional news model to better listen to and take direction from the community?

Today Signal has grown to 35 employees around the state. Our CEO and business team are based in Columbus, the Signal Akron newsroom celebrates its first birthday next month, Signal Cincinnati Documenters came online this summer. And this fall we celebrated the launch of our Statehouse bureau.  

Closer to home this year, our Signal Cleveland reporters looked into out-of-town landlords and their impact on Clevelanders and dived into affordable housing with a yearlong series. Cleveland Documenters, the heart of what makes Signal unique, has grown to more than 950 Greater Clevelanders. This year they continued to do their thing, covering 1,220 meetings, from RTA to Metroparks to Cleveland City Council, that may not have been covered otherwise. 

We met many of you in communities throughout Cuyahoga County, answering questions on the election, voter registration and housing. We’ve printed flyers and passed them out in the community. Expect to see more of that from us in 2025. 

Also in 2025, we’ll host our third annual spelling bee in Central and our first spelling bee in East Cleveland in partnership with the East Cleveland library and The East Clevelander Magazine. 

We’ve come a long way from those summer days before Signal was born. And, just as I do with my children as we look ahead to next year, I’m proud not just of how Signal has grown but of how our team has too. I can’t wait to see what’s next as we continue the work of making news and information more accessible, more relevant and more useful for more Greater Clevelanders.