Hello, everybody!
Saying I’m excited about the recent changes to the BirminghamWatch logo and website (just soft-launched last week) would be quite the understatement. It took us a little longer to share these updates with you, but I hope you find them worth the wait.
Our new website is slowly revealing itself
Among the more noticeable updates we’ve made to the website:
- A cleaner and more modern user experience. The streamlined layout highlights our latest reporting across existing and planned beats, including our ongoing coverage of the Birmingham City Council and the Jefferson County Commission. It’s easier to scan and notice what’s new and what matters to you most right now.
- More prominence for our recurring features. Weekly staples like BW Recommends and the Monday Morning Watch will soon have dedicated placement so readers can reliably find public meeting rundowns, curated story lists, and other regular features. They will also be more visible in general.
- Better accessibility and readability. We’ve updated our typography, spacing, and visual hierarchy to make our long-form reporting easier to read on both desktop and mobile devices. The redesign also makes it easier to enable more tools to make our online reporting more contextual and accessible to more people.
- More shareable. We’ve made it easier to share our work across multiple social media platforms and email. It’s also easier to find where we exist on many of those services.
Our new logo
Then, there’s our logo.
Our new logo, which has been enjoying a… slow rollout since last fall, takes a stylized look towards our central business district downtown from the fire tower at Ruffner Mountain Nature Preserve, one of the sections of the city responsible for its meteoric growth. The colors reflect what you might see as molten iron is poured at a facility like Sloss Furnaces.
I’d argue it’s quite befitting a news organization that aims to cover the City Built to Change the South.
This new website and look are possible thanks to financial support received from the Google News Initiative Fundamentals Lab in 2025. We’re also grateful to our friends at The Modern Brand for their work on our new logo, and to the folks at Infomedia for reimagining our digital outpost and helping us ensure a seamless transition to it in recent days.
This new look is the next step in becoming more accessible and useful. We’re looking forward to working with longtime partners and new ones to ensure our work is available in all the ways needed. Our goal is to noticeably live into our mission of being “an invaluable resource for the community’s civically curious.”
I have one request of you if you’re reading this: please help us spread the word about our organization and its work. Share stories with your friends and colleagues. Invite those who haven’t visited our site in some time to come back and check it out. I think they’ll be surprised by what they find now and in the coming months. And if you are able, consider donating to help us continue to maintain our momentum.
That said, share the site with others and share your feedback with me as we continue to work on it.
Finally, for anyone who has ever contributed to our efforts privately or publicly, thank you. We appreciate you and hope you appreciate these changes.
Cheers.
André Natta is the executive editor of BirminghamWatch and the executive director of its parent nonprofit organization, the Alabama Initiative for Independent Journalism.