Justin Auciello
I design and operate civic signal systems: two-way public information systems that help communities and institutions turn distributed observation into usable shared understanding in everyday civic life and crisis.In 2009, I wrote that the crisis in local journalism was not just a business problem, but a breakdown in civic infrastructure, and that communities themselves would need to help hold the information system together. That idea has shaped my work ever since.For the past 15 years, I have built and led these systems where clarity, trust, and timing are mission critical. In 2011, I founded Jersey Shore Hurricane News (JSHN), a community-powered information network that now reaches more than 300,000 people across New Jersey. During Superstorm Sandy, when 911 and formal channels were strained, the New Jersey Office of Emergency Management used Jersey Shore Hurricane News to help communicate with people requesting storm-surge rescue and support situational awareness.Since then, JSHN has helped communities navigate hurricanes, blizzards, wildfires, the pandemic, and long recoveries, while also serving as a trusted source of orientation during calmer periods.That work later extended into seven years of reporting with WHYY and earned White House recognition as a Champion of Change.After Hurricane Maria, I extended the same approach into Puerto Rico, where I designed and field-led Información como Ayuda, a two-way humanitarian information system built under collapse conditions that reached more than one million people. I later brought this work into international settings through Internews, advising on information ecosystem work across fragile and disaster-affected contexts on five continents.I developed this work in parallel with a planning practice. As a licensed New Jersey professional planner, I work on land use, zoning, redevelopment, and public-process matters under real institutional and regulatory conditions. That planning lens — grounded in systems, infrastructure, implementation, and performance under stress — is one reason I came to understand information not simply as content, but as infrastructure.In practice, I think like a planner, operate like a field lead, write like a journalist, and design like a systems architect.Today, I am codifying this work into a replicable model for newsrooms, civic institutions, and other public-serving organizations: civic signal systems that help communities and institutions recognize emerging conditions earlier, build trust, and respond with greater clarity under routine and high-stress conditions.