I got together with Curtis Johnson and Jay Walljasper for lunch at Muffuletta’s in St. Paul last week. I spent much of the 90s at Utne Reader when Jay was editor and I was the new media guy. I’ve been doing blog-related projects for Curt and his Citistates colleagues since 2004, where Jay is one of the associates.

The occasion? We’ll be working together with the Detroit Revitalization Fellows Program at Wayne St. University, funded in part by the Kresge Foundation.  The program is:

… designed to attract, develop and retain promising young professionals who will help lead the economic revitalization and development of Detroit. This talent pool is being cultivated in order to build the capacity of public, for-profit, nonprofit and quasi-public organizations, including Detroit’s anchor institutions.

We’re doing this project under the Citiscope umbrella, a Citistates Group project. I’ll provide more details in the next few weeks as our work gets going.