Lila Mills is the editor-in-chief of Signal Cleveland, the inaugural newsroom in the Signal Ohio network of locally-based, nonprofit, nonpartisan newsrooms. She will be the master of ceremonies for our Celebration 2024 event on November 22. Get your tickets!
Meet Lila Mills
With a 25-year career in both journalism and community building, Lila understands Greater Clevelanders are active participants in creating the future we all want to see in this city we love. Speaking with Cleveland Magazine as part of their Most Interesting People of 2023, she said "I can’t over-emphasize enough how much we want to be hearing from people. Our primary goal, right out of the box, is just to build trust with people.”
The goal is to make Cleveland’s news as accessible as possible. In its initial weeks in 2023, Signal published stories about wage theft, literacy rates, local entrepreneurs and governmental organizations’ inner workings. Along with its stories posted online, Signal aims to utilize text messaging services, pamphlets and fliers, videos, podcasts and social media for its storytelling and news-sharing.
Lila was raised on Cleveland's southeast side and has degrees from Columbia University. She lives in Beachwood with her two children, ages 11 and 19, and her husband.
I got interested in journalism, really, from the perspective of wanting to tell real stories that were happening in Cleveland.
About Signal and Cleveland Documenters
At Signal Cleveland, Lila runs an 18-person newsroom with reporters covering economics, education, government, community and more. The newsroom also has a Cleveland Documenters program that trains and pays Greater Clevelanders to be part of the news gathering process by attending and taking notes at local government meetings. More than 950 Greater Clevelanders have signed up to be Cleveland Documenters. There is at least one Documenter in almost every ZIP code in the county.
