From the municipal newsletter to daily updates, CityMag gives local governments their own digital news platform to showcase community initiatives and make it easier for residents to report issues.
In many French municipalities, the printed municipal newsletter remains a main channel of communication between city hall and residents. Published quarterly, or sometimes less often, it presents the local government’s achievements, ongoing projects, events and initiatives that shape community life.
This publication remains valuable, but its schedule does not always match residents’ information needs. Between issues, community life continues: organizations hold events, businesses organize activities, public facilities host new programs, and municipal departments regularly have useful information to share.
With CityMag, local governments can extend their municipal newsletter to the web and mobile, run their own local news platform and communicate with residents throughout the year.
Turn the municipal newsletter into an ongoing digital publication
Municipal communications teams already produce substantial amounts of content. Articles, photographs, interviews, project updates and profiles of residents or organizations take time and resources to prepare, write and design.
Yet distribution often remains concentrated in a few printed editions each year.
CityMag helps local governments make more of this work by providing a platform where content already created for the municipal newsletter can be published and read at any time.
There is no need to start from scratch or establish an entirely new editorial operation. City hall can build on the content it already produces, give it a second life online and gradually develop more regular communication.
An article about a school renovation, the opening of a sports facility or a community organization can be published on CityMag, read on a computer or phone, and remain available long after the printed newsletter has been delivered.
The printed newsletter retains its role, while becoming one of the channels for municipal information that is now available year-round.
Publish at the pace of community life, beyond the print schedule
One of the main advantages of a digital news platform is the ability to publish information when it becomes useful.
City hall no longer needs to wait for the next newsletter to announce a public meeting, introduce a service, notify residents about roadworks or promote a cultural event.
CityMag gives municipal teams a publishing interface that lets them update their local news platform as events unfold.
This changes how they communicate with residents. Municipal information moves beyond a quarterly publication to become a service people can access every day.
Local governments can share updates about municipal projects, construction work, cultural activities, sports, community organizations and events that directly affect residents’ daily lives.
Content is available through web and mobile interfaces, making information easy to find whether residents are at home, at work or on the move.
CityMag also offers distribution channels including notifications, email and SMS, depending on the features and uses selected by the local government.
The aim is not to send more messages, but to help people receive or find relevant information when they need it.
Give community organizations, businesses and local trades a voice
Community life extends well beyond the activities of local government.
It also depends on nonprofit, sports, cultural and business organizations that contribute to local life every day.
Yet these organizations and local businesses often struggle to make their initiatives known. Municipal publications have limited space, and social media posts do not guarantee that information will reach the residents concerned.
CityMag lets city hall open its local news platform to community contributors, if it chooses.
A sports club can present its activities, announce registration and publish competition dates. A cultural organization can promote a performance or exhibition. A local business or tradesperson can introduce their work and announce an event at their premises.
Each contributor can have a space to publish news and events under the arrangements defined by the local government.
This option represents a meaningful change in how municipal communication is organized.
City hall can communicate about its own activities while also providing a tool that raises awareness of the wider range of initiatives shaping community life.
Over time, this approach can build a local information network where residents find municipal updates alongside news from community organizations, local businesses and neighborhood facilities.
Make local information easier for residents to find
This development also addresses a growing challenge in many communities: access to local information.
In France, regional newspapers have been undergoing economic and organizational change for several years. In some areas, shrinking editorial resources and the closure of local publications have reduced coverage of municipal life.
National media cannot meet all of these information needs. Subjects that matter directly to residents of a particular community do not necessarily receive national coverage.
Social media is a useful distribution channel, but information is scattered across pages and posts whose visibility depends heavily on the platforms.
Residents can therefore struggle to find information that matters to their daily lives: a neighborhood activity, a community event, a local business initiative, a public meeting or a cultural program.
CityMag addresses this by helping local governments provide an identifiable local information space that is free for residents and accessible on the web or their phones.
The purpose is to complement local journalism, whose independence and role remain essential, by giving community initiatives additional visibility.
The goal is simple: help every resident easily find information about their community in one place.
A community calendar for local events
The growing number of local initiatives can make it difficult to find information about nearby events.
A concert, sports match, exhibition, talk, market or community celebration may be advertised through separate channels, without a shared calendar where residents can find them all.
CityMag lets local governments bring this information together in a community calendar accessible to everyone.
City hall can publish its own events and, when this option is enabled, let community organizations and local professionals post theirs too.
Residents then have a single place to discover upcoming events in their community.
The platform also offers registration and ticketing features to support the organization of selected free or paid events.
Alongside municipal communication, CityMag supports residents’ participation in community life.
Make it easy for residents to report everyday issues
Communication between city hall and residents should work both ways. Residents also need a simple way to report problems in their community.
A broken streetlight, damaged municipal equipment, illegal dumping, road damage or a cleanliness issue are all situations where residents want to notify municipal services quickly.
CityMag includes an issue-reporting feature that lets residents send their observations directly to city hall from a phone or computer.
Residents have an easily identifiable place to report issues in their everyday surroundings, without first having to find the contact details of the responsible department.
For local government, this feature centralizes reports and makes it easier for municipal teams to take them up. It improves the flow of information between residents and the departments responsible for maintaining and operating public facilities.
Alongside news and events, CityMag becomes a practical local tool that lets residents contribute to improving their surroundings.
City hall gains a platform to inform residents, highlight local initiatives and collect reports that help improve everyday services.
A publishing platform designed for local government
To create a digital local news service, a municipality might consider developing a dedicated website, a mobile app, an events calendar and separate distribution tools.
This approach can involve several providers, multiple interfaces and solutions that do not necessarily communicate with each other.
CityMag takes a different approach by bringing these features together in one platform.
Municipal teams have a management space to prepare and publish content, organize news and events, collect resident reports and choose appropriate distribution channels.
The platform also supports an approach where several community contributors enrich the available information, without city hall having to produce every publication itself.
This is particularly useful for municipalities with limited staffing in their communications departments.
By reusing existing content and making room for local initiatives, they can gradually enrich their news platform without necessarily increasing editorial workloads at the same rate.
With CityMag, local governments can take control of their community information
Public communication is changing. Residents want quick access to relevant information and simple ways to contact city hall. At the same time, local governments work within limited staffing and budgets.
The response does not necessarily mean producing ever more content. It can mean distributing existing material more effectively, making useful community information easier to share and improving access to municipal services.
With CityMag, a municipality can retain its printed newsletter, reuse its content on a digital platform, keep residents informed daily, involve community contributors and make it easier to submit reports to municipal departments.
It gains its own local news platform, accessible on the web and mobile, with control over its publications and organization.
More than a municipal app, CityMag helps turn local government communication into an ongoing, free community information service that reflects local life and supports everyday relationships between residents and city hall.
Discover CityMag for your community
CityMag, a solution developed within the Digitalebox group, supports local governments that want to modernize communication, extend their printed newsletters to digital channels, improve access to local information and simplify resident issue reporting.
Explore CityMag’s features and talk to our team about introducing them in your community.