Your donations to Forest Hills Connection will support a young journalist and continued neighborhood-focused news

One of our first photos of 2024.

To bring you the news about our neighborhood and our neighbors, Forest Hills Connection relies primarily on the efforts of volunteers. But from time to time, we add a paid reporter to the roster. The purpose is two-fold: We get to support up-and-coming journalists as they build their careers. And we benefit from their fresh perspectives, and their energy and drive to report the news.

So, in the coming weeks, be on the lookout for Allison Walsh’s byline. A Forest Hills resident, Walsh is studying for her Master’s in journalism at Georgetown University.

Your tax-deductible donations and ad purchases also pay for behind-the-scenes tech that allow us to deliver hyperlocal news and information via our website and email newsletters. Our existing expenses include:

• Ever-growing server storage for more than 12 years of neighborhood news and history.
• Protecting ForestHillsConnection.com and its visitors from spammers and malware.
• The tech know-how required to help us with the above.

To that list we must add paid upgrades for the free services we use to send Forest Hills Connection to your inbox. We’re close to outgrowing our free Mailchimp newsletter platform. Also, if you’re a daily posts subscriber and have noticed those emails have stopped, the fix will likely add one more fee.

Those of you who have donated over the years, and continue to sustain us with your support, we thank you! You have made it possible for us to cover the neighborhood like no one else can.

Forest Hills Connection is the only news organization that has covered DC Water’s Soapstone Valley sewer rehabilitation project from its inception to its (near) completion.

We have provided continuing coverage of security and safety issues in apartment buildings, problems shared across the District. We’re the only local news outlet reporting the DC Council has scheduled a December 10th hearing on the Office of the Attorney General’s SAFE Act, which would expand DC’s nuisance buildings law to include apartments. (To testify in person, sign up by 5 p.m. on December 6th.)

We cover the at-times difficult and often-invisible work advisory neighborhood commissioners do for the community, as well as efforts by other neighbors to make our neighborhood and city a better place to live.

And we have endeavored since the beginning to spotlight local businesses, local nature, local history, and fascinating locals.

It’s been our joy to provide this service since April 2012. And we still have many stories to tell!