Welcome to The Jersey Bee, useful local news and information for East Essex County

My name is Simon Galperin, and I’m the executive editor of The Jersey Bee, a nonprofit local news organization serving East Essex County.

As a journalist, I’ll be the first to tell you that local news isn’t working for most people. The Jersey Bee is here to change that.

Traditional news providers are reactive. They look for drama and trauma. They follow politicians and people in power, repeating what they say, and defining what the public sees. They’re more likely to make you scared of your neighbor than connected. And the only way to get involved is to watch on a screen or pay for admission.

The Jersey Bee is a better way to get local news and civic information.

The Jersey Bee works with the people we serve to understand what they want to know about where they live. We produce news that responds to local information needs and addresses public accountability gaps. We help people discover ways to get involved in their community and understand why their participation matters. And we work with them to get directly engaged in community service through our Civic Media Corps.

The Jersey Bee is a local news provider with a mission to improve the quality of life in our community.

We envision improved healthcare for our neighbors, better representation in local government for voters, well-resourced schools for students and teachers, easy access to green space and leisure for all, and quality, affordable food and housing for people experiencing job scarcity, low wages, or low wealth.

Traditional news providers would rather keep reporting on the lack of these things in our community instead of ways to improve them. That’s why I’ve spent the last three years leading an effort to establish The Jersey Bee as a local news provider that contributes to solving problems instead of just reporting on them.

The Jersey Bee’s precursor launched in April 2020 as The Bloomfield Information Project.

The Bloomfield Information Project served the Greater Bloomfield community by producing 12,000 local news reports, publishing 600 daily newsletters, training 40 community reporters, and sending thousands of text messages with mutual aid info before beginning its reorganization as The Jersey Bee in the summer of 2023.

In Bloomfield, we received an award from the N.J. Society of Professional Journalists for our community-driven investigation into the impact of township police on Black and Latino drivers. Our COVID-19 coverage and food access guide won local news excellence awards from The Center for Cooperative Media at Montclair State University.

The Bloomfield Information Project was also among ten projects selected for a prestigious research fellowship at Stanford University, where we further developed our participatory public service model.

But in three years of working as The Bloomfield Information Project, we found that access to information, connection, and accountability were also challenges in neighboring communities. And more importantly – we couldn’t address them in one place without addressing them in the other.

So, The Bloomfield Information Project has become The Jersey Bee and expanded to continue building a more informed, engaged, and connected community for us and our neighbors. 

This expansion brings our award-winning, public service journalism to the 780,000 people living in East Essex County’s 12 municipalities.

The initial 12 communities served by The Jersey Bee include:

You can also subscribe to a county-wide newsletter to get updates for all of these places.

We are excited to begin working with new partners in our region as we grow and establish our services.

And we welcome you to join our movement by signing up for our daily newsletter or becoming a monthly sustainer and supporting this work.

More from The Jersey Bee to come.

With gratitude,