My name is London Lyle. I’ve been working with Bucket List Community Cafe for a little over a year now. When I started here, I was an undergraduate intern, working towards my bachelor’s degree in journalism at the University of Colorado Boulder and writing stories for Bucket List for college credit. After graduating in May, I joined the engagement team, and now I’m the paid engagement manager, helping with fundraising efforts, running our social media, and tracking audience engagement.
Part of Bucket List’s mission is to mentor the next generation of journalists. When I was in my senior year of college at CU, I was worried about my next step. I knew I wanted to be a journalist, but I didn’t have any connections in the industry. I had one other journalism internship in another state under my belt and had no idea how or where to get started in the field. But when I joined Bucket List, it clicked. This is a real-world newsroom experience and opportunities began to fall into my lap. Now I am also freelancing for four other publications!
I often think about how I would have gotten started if it weren’t for Bucket List. And to be honest with you, I don’t really want to think about it. It would have been hard. It’s clear that we’re doing our job of mentoring the next generation of storytellers. I’m a living, breathing example of that. Being a part of the Bucket List team has made me feel like I have space to make mistakes, ask questions, push boundaries, and switch it up. I can’t imagine a better place to work right out of college. I feel prepared to take my next steps.
But that’s not what I want to talk about. What I really want to talk about are the stories that we tell at Bucket List Community Cafe. I was asked to send my top three published writing samples to someone the other day, and I realized that all three of them were pieces I’d done for Bucket List. That’s because the stories we tell here are unlike ones you’ll find anywhere else. You would never guess college students and recent graduates wrote these and about half of the stories we write, we pitched ourselves.
We cover news, issues, culture, people, events, food, pets. You name it. In June, I wrote a story about biphobia. This is something that I personally care about as a bisexual woman, but it’s not something you typically will see covered in your neighborhood paper. But the article did extremely well, and it encouraged me to cover more queer topics in the future: I wrote an article about LGBTQ+ affirming churches for Bucket List a couple of months ago.
That’s a perfect example of what makes Bucket List, Bucket List. We’re so open to serving the community and innovating local journalism. When you write about what you want to write about, your writing is going to be better, and more interesting. I got to write about going to see the Taylor Swift concert in July and what it meant to me as a lifelong Swiftie, and it was one of my favorite pieces I’ve done. Getting paid to write about a Taylor Swift concert is kind of the dream, you know? Plus as a brand ambassador for Bucket List, I get to go out in the community, meet people, hear their stories, tell them ours and learn how to market a brand.
Unlike other news outlets, our multimedia journalists and media entrepreneurs are the driving force. When you have Gen Z behind your social media, it’s naturally top-notch. We post daily, we have cool graphics, aesthetically pleasing social media and monthly meetings where we track our analytics and brainstorm on our editorial content and how we can better serve our audience. I can’t tell you how many rooms I’ve been in in the past six months where I was definitely the youngest one there, but every time people were coming up to me asking to know more about the hyperlocal neighborly news website called Bucket List Community Cafe.
Our coverage of Denver and its surrounding suburbs is unparalleled. Take a look at our website, sign up for our weekly newsletter, and see for yourself. And if you believe in our mission as much as I do, consider contributing to Bucket List Community Cafe. We’re only going up from here and we’re innovating community journalism together.
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