Oh hey, there. Welcome back. We’re delighted to have you here.

It’s been a minute (221 days to be exact, but who’s counting?) since DCist went dark, and we are overjoyed to be back to filling these pages with much-needed coverage of the District.

After being shut down by our former parent company, DCist is getting a second life thanks to WAMU, one of the city’s most trusted news organizations and a genuine champion of local journalism. Rather than taking our cues from out-of-town owners, we’re now accountable only to our own community. It’s a game changer.

Our plan is pretty simple, though: bring back what you know and loved about DCist, and make it even better.

You can still look forward to catching up on all of D.C.’s news, culture, and curiosities. Our team of reporters will keep digging up essential stories. We’ll continue to carefully curate the city’s events for your perusal. Overheard in D.C. will return to its rightful place on Friday afternoons.

So what exactly will be new around these parts?

For one thing: you’ll no longer find any federal politics coverage. As part of a national network, we occasionally dipped into those fetid waters; that will no longer be the case for DCist 2.0. We’ll be all local, all the time.

In this brave new world, you’ll also sometimes find stories from WAMU’s deeply talented reporters on DCist. How lucky are we?

DCist is now a part of a community-supported news organization, and we’re asking those of you who appreciate local journalism to help make the site sustainable in the long-run by backing our Kickstarter campaign.

Your support is making all of this possible, and it is difficult to convey how tremendously grateful we are to those of you who have already donated.

Our inboxes are open. Our typing fingers are ready. Our curiosity is as insatiable as ever. And so it begins, a new era for the news outlet that could.