Communities & Banking is turning 25! Check the website to see how basic the older versions looked: http://www.bostonfed.org/-/media/Documents/cb/PDF/summer91.pdf.

Back then, C,B was a newsletter featuring a few community devel­opment stories and a lot of press releases and bank news. Since we tightened the focus on lower-income issues, bank-oriented articles have tended to be about the creative efforts many banks pursue as part of their Community Reinvestment Act responsibilities.

Today, we solicit many articles from outside the Fed, offering read­ers the latest research affecting lower-income communities—and sharing tested community development concepts and techniques. To our knowledge, C,B is the only publication in New England that focuses on the economic concerns of low- and moderate-income constituencies and those who serve them. There is no other such regionwide public forum.

As C,B's content has evolved, so too has the design, gradually incorporating better photographs and, starting about seven years ago, tapping the talents of illustrators. The most striking changes to the layout and design have come under Rachel Bissett, who attends C,B editorial board meetings and takes comments seriously. Meanwhile, board member Tom DeCoff has upgraded our Web presence, moving from pdfs alone to both html and pdf formats. Additionally, we now post online the data behind our maps and are increasingly testing interactive enhancements. Everything gets tweeted by Denae Thibault @BostonFed, and we blog about C,B articles and related topics at www.thecentralpremise.org.

Engage with us. We'll take your suggestions seriously, too, as to­gether we embrace the possibilities of the next 25 years.

Best,
Caroline Ellis
caroline.ellis@bos.frb.org
Managing Editor