The Charlottesville Podcasting Network was created twenty years ago this month. I’m Sean Tubbs, the person who launched the site. These days I’m the president of Town Crier Productions and this website is now under that umbrella.

My other platforms at the moment are Charlottesville Community Engagement and Information Charlottesville. The former is a newsletter sent out through Substack. The second is a website I created as an archive for whatever I wrote during a period when I wasn’t a working journalist.

This website was created as a way for me to experiment with podcasting. At the time I was a freelance radio producer and saw the new distribution technology as a way for me to potentially make additional money.

Now I make my living because there are a lot of people who want me to keep writing. There are ways that brings in revenue. The profession I am in has always been supported through multiple sources of revenue.

I took another job at another organization in April 2007 because I had responsibilities. I was no longer in charge and could not devote much attention to this website anymore. I handed it over to a couple of other caretakers, and one of them retired a few years ago.

Since then, I’ve posted a few things, but not on a regular basis. This is definitely a website on hiatus, much like Fifth District Community Engagement and Charlottesville Quarantine Report. The latter was something that sprang forth from me in the early days of the COVID19 pandemic.

I do not know what the future of this website will be, but I do know I will be revisiting the work of 20 years ago as I experimented with using audio to tell longer stories in different configurations then I could get on the radio. For most of my time at Charlottesville Tomorrow, I did not do much with audio except for posting entire files of the meetings I covered.

And that’s what the audio is for this post. This is from a meeting in April 2010 of those members of Charlottesville City Council who were on the elected body back in the 1970’s when the decision was made to convert East Main Street into a pedestrian mall. You can read the story over at Charlottesville Tomorrow. This audio is available there as well.

I’m uploading it here because it’s a Saturday and those are usually the days I organize things because I try not to have a deadline. I’m cleaning up files and this was one I came across that I downloaded at some point intending to cut it up into soundbites.

Maybe I’ll do that one day, but organization involves archiving and connecting the present with the past in hopes of having both stick around into the future.

UPDATE: I recognize the audio is not uploading and I’m not sure how to fix it. I am going to put it down for now and come back to it as this is a day of organization. I will seek help.

I started this website 19 years ago to experiment with the production of content. At the time I was a freelancer who sold stories for public radio outlets, and the idea of podcasting opened up the potential for new markets and new ways of telling stories.

There are a lot of experiments still posted in those early days, but there was never really much regular content except for Rick Moore’s Sunday Morning Wake-Up Call and other radio shows.

When I went to work for Charlottesville Tomorrow, my ability to experiment was restricted but I began to write articles that were just text and images. The audio fell behind. Someone else became a caretaker of this site, which I could not keep up anymore.

Four years ago, I became an independent journalist again and I produce a regular newsletter and podcast called Charlottesville Community Engagement. Earlier this year, I began a new partnership with WTJU where they would air a version of the podcast on Saturday mornings.

I’ve not been posting those to this website because I ‘m not sure if there’s audience. I usually just cross-post the WTJU version to the CCE feed.

But this edition is a little different because it inadvertently became a capturing of two different meetings at which Albemarle County’s Comprehensive Plan was discussed. The four-phase review process began in the fall of 2021 and county staff took a pause at the end of the second phase.

This edition of the WTJU podcast contains sonic summaries of the July 9, 2024 meeting of the Albemarle Planning Commission and the July 17, 2024 meeting of the Albemarle Board of Supervisors. If you want to know more about the process, my reporting is one of the only non-government accounts. One of the Supervisors even noted that there were no members of the media present. Since the pandemic, I record from home.

In any case, here are some selected articles I’ve written in the past three years on what the county calls AC44.

This website is nearly 19 years old, and doesn’t really have any original content of its own. But without the Charlottesville Podcasting Network, there is no way I would have ever been able to be where I am today—in an era of never-ending experimentation!

For most of its time, Charlottesville Community Engagement has been a newsletter and podcast. The recent creation of a radio version that airs on WTJU Radio on Saturdays at 6 a.m. has disrupted much of the workflow. This week, the WTJU Rock Marathon pre-empted my show. That gave me some extra time on Saturday to produce this edition.

Here’s what you will hear:

Welcome to the April 6, 2024 edition of Charlottesville Community Engagement. I’m Sean Tubbs of Town Crier Productions, a company that seeks to increase awareness of what’s happening at meetings of local government in the greater Charlottesville area. If you click through to the podcast, you will hear a series of stories that have appeared in the newsletter and podcast this past little while.

Good morning and welcome to Charlottesville Community Engagement for Saturday. March 23. What is this? It’s a weekly look at some of what’s been happening in local and regional government in the part of Virginia where WTJU broadcasts. I’m Sean Tubbs, a journalist keen on writing as much as I can and sharing it in a variety of places.

This website is one of those places! I created this in 2005 as an experiment and that’s still what I aim to do every day I’m at work. This is another example of Town Crier Productions.

In this edition:

Good morning and welcome to Charlottesville Community Engagement for March 16, 2024. I’m Sean Tubbs, a local journalist who created a company called Town Crier Productions four years ago to increase coverage of municipal governments in the area around Charlottesville. This week on radio version for WTJU, we solely look at public transportation in the community and efforts to increase service while also choosing vehicles that will help Charlottesville meet goals to eliminate greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.

To learn more and to read the script, visit the Substack newsletter and podcast home page.

On the program today:

This is the archive edition of Charlottesville Community Engagement for Saturday, March 9, 2024. I’m Sean Tubbs, a local journalist who writes about infrastructure, budgets, and all sorts of decisions about what gets built. What you’re going to hear is a digest of stories that have been used this week in the podcast version of a newsletter I send out, with much of the sound coming from local government meetings. The idea is to capture this moment in our community’s history in as much detail as possible.

On today’s program:

(Air date: March 2, 2024)

Hello and welcome again to another radio version of Charlottesville Community Engagement, customized for WTJU. I’m Sean Tubbs, the president of Town Crier Productions, a company I set up in 2020 to create stories about what’s happening in the localities surrounding the University of Virginia. Since July 2020, I’ve produced these in newsletter and podcast form, but 

I’m glad now to bring some of these stories to you over the airwaves.

In this edition: 

On February 24, 2024, the very first installment of a new customized version of Charlottesville Community Engagement created for WTJU. I’m Sean Tubbs, a community journalist who started this website in 2005 as an experiment in community journalism! That adventure continues with an omnibus version of the regular podcast.

Back in the summer of 2020, I started a newsletter and podcast about what’s called “the built environment.” What is that? Here’s a definition from the United States Environmental Protection Agency:

“The built environment touches all aspects of our lives, encompassing the buildings we live in, the distribution systems that provide us with water and electricity, and the roads, bridges, and transportation systems we use to get from place to place.” 

Charlottesville Community Engagement tries to cover as much of that as possible in the area around the University of Virginia and what’s known as the Thomas Jefferson Planning District Commission. Listen to enough of these and you’ll get to know more about how decisions are made and how you might get involved. 

On this program:

Before you go: The Charlottesville Podcasting Network is a product of Town Crier Productions, a company formed in 2020 as part of my return to journalism. The material in this program is assembled from editions of Charlottesville Community Engagement that seeks to report as much as possible about how things get built.

To ensure this research can be sustained, please consider becoming a paid subscriber or contributing monthly through Patreon.

At their meeting on January 17, 2024, the Albemarle Board of Supervisors reviewed draft goals and objectives for five of the eight chapters in the update of the Comprehensive Plan. The process is called AC44. This audio originally appeared in the January 26, 2024 edition of Charlottesville Community Engagement and is also archived on Information Charlottesville. I’m cross-posting audio to this site as an experiment and furtherance of the archive!