I moved to Mansfield in 2024. My family and I moved into a newly built house in a newly built neighborhood. As I explored Mansfield, I saw construction site after construction site. I found some places to go and things to do. I was excited about getting involved.

But I felt like I was missing things. I didn't know what was being built there. I didn't know what events were going on, or how my family and I could participate. There wasn't any place that covered Mansfield comprehensively and consistently. There are some places that fill in the gaps somewhat (shout out to the Mansfield Record and About Mansfield), but they don't have the resources to provide the full picture. The news was scattered. You had to piece things together on your own.

I built the Mansfield Flash to solve that problem.

The Flash isn't about maximizing profit or saving journalism. It's about providing the most comprehensive picture of Mansfield in the most efficient way possible: a once-daily email or website update. If it's about Mansfield, we'll deliver it to you. Ten stories, one email, every day.

We'll also deliver original reporting when the need arises, but it will focus on the things that you care about. Nothing boring. We won't cover city council agendas just to fill space.

Why I built it this way

After working at The Dallas Morning News for 10 years — both in the newsroom and on the business side — I've seen all aspects of traditional news. It's broken. I don't blame them. They are trying to survive. But in doing that they've forgotten about the consumer.

They layer the page with ads and throw in pop-ups for newsletters. When you finally make it to your story, you'll get blocked and asked to subscribe, likely for a low-cost deal that quickly becomes prohibitively expensive. When I worked there, they made you call to cancel — and then called you back with a lower rate when you do.

It's the old business model: we provide this thing, you're stuck with it, whether you like it or not.

The Mansfield Flash is not trying to save a newsroom. We are not trying to fit a relic of the past into the modern era. We are built from the ground up in today's age and solving a very specific problem: provide one space for all information about Mansfield, no matter where it comes from.

What we're committed to

• There will be no pop-ups on this site. Ever.
• You will never need a paid subscription. (We unfortunately cannot guarantee that all stories we link to are subscription-free.)
• We will be insanely focused on news directly relevant to Mansfield.
• We will not gatekeep which organizations we link to. Instead of aggregating stories from others, we will just link directly.
• Our stories will be as short as possible. No filler.

Traditional news is boring. It's run mostly by corporate conglomerates who are just following each other into the wilderness. Unlike them, I live here. I care about Mansfield. I don't want the Flash to be boring. I want it to be part of the fabric of this city. Let's build it together.

Michael Florek
Founder, The Mansfield Flash