UH Community Spirit & the Mechanics of Making UH News Happen
We’re still riding the wave of the neighborhood’s biggest event of the year—and our biggest fundraiser—Party on Park 2026. I want to take a moment here to recognize the incredible “human capital” behind that success. Our fellow board members and volunteers collectively dedicated hundreds of hours to making this event something special for our community.
Specifically, the entire board wants to recognize Angela Jackson-Llamas, who led this massive undertaking. From hauling barricade signs to finding and helping sponsors and ensuring every guest felt the University Heights hospitality, Angela’s “get it done” tenacity and impeccable execution helped us grow this event nearly twofold this year. She is the embodiment of the dedication that makes our neighborhood thrive. The Volunteer Engine Behind Producing UH News As we transitioned immediately from event teardown to UH News production, I thought folks might wonder how UH News comes together each month.
Marc reviewing final proof of UH News
To do this monumental task every month, we’ve embraced AI tools—not to replace human creativity, but to empower it.
We use Google Gemini and Anthropic Claude as sophisticated “digital proofreaders.” By training them on the UH News Style Guide, we can instantly scan submissions to ensure they meet our specific standards for tone and formatting. This ensures a consistent voice throughout the paper, regardless of which volunteer is at the keyboard. This gives our copy editors who make the final decisions more time and space to focus on meaning and readability.
NotebookLM serves as our “research library.” With over a decade of UH News archives (and all 40 years soon!) plus other UHCA content, this digital library allows writers and editors to fact-check neighborhood history in seconds. We also utilize it to analyze multiple sources and complex data to help us create accurate and concise articles (like the recent survey report).
To ensure our visual presence matches this editorial quality, we use Adobe Express (donated) for layout and Canva (at a significantly reduced nonprofit rate) for digital graphics.
We are thankful for these modern tools (donated or at a significantly reduced cost) to support and sustain our free local newspaper, ensuring that the UH voice remains loud, clear, and authentically human. I hope that by being open and transparent, we continue to earn your trust knowing that a lot of care, effort, and pride goes into making UH News as accurate, interesting, and useful as possible.
As always, we welcome submissions at link.uhsd.org/submit (our complete UH News Editorial Policies & Style Guide is also on that same page).
Here’s to an amazing summer ahead—I look forward to seeing folks at our events, Summer Concerts, and around the neighborhood!
