Mayor Mike Duggan has hired two Detroit journalists to help communicate the city's policy initiatives and get information to residents about the "small triumphs" in their neighborhoods.

Aaron Foley, previously editor of BLAC Detroit magazine, has joined the mayor's office in a newly created position of neighborhood storyteller. Foley will focus on creating a new platform to deliver neighborhood news and information online and via a print publication, said Peter Kadushin, Duggan's communications director.

"Aaron brings a unique storytelling style to City Hall. He and the mayor are both dedicated to creating meaningful and impactful ways to give Detroiters and their neighborhoods a stronger voice," Kadushin said. "We are excited for Aaron to join our team."

Matt Helms, a longtime reporter at the Detroit Free Press, has been hired as director of special projects and research in the mayor's office, Kadushin said.

"He will assist in developing the research, messaging and communications strategies around key policies and initiatives," Kadushin said of Helms.

Both jobs are newly created positions and beef up Duggan's communications apparatus just as the first-term mayor gears up for a re-election battle this fall.

Foley, 32, will be paid $75,000 annually and Helms' annual salary will be $85,000 a year, Kadushin said.

Helms, 44, moves from the Free Press' City Hall bureau in the basement of the Coleman A. Young Municipal Center to the mayor's office on the 11th floor. The 24-year veteran reporter at the Free Press has covered the Duggan administration since the Democratic mayor was elected in 2013 and he covered Detroit's historic bankruptcy.

"I'll be the administration's chief writer, responsible for helping advance important initiatives like reducing abysmally high auto insurance rates and tackling other critical issues that stand in the way of a stronger, more equitable recovery of this city," Helms wrote in a March 17 Facebook post.

Foley is author of "How to Live in Detroit without Being a Jackass" — a social guide for transplants and millenial newcomers published in 2015 — and he edited the forthcoming book "The Detroit Neighborhood Guidebook," which will be published this summer. He has previously been an editor or writer for Ward's Automotive Reports, Jalopnik Detroit and MLive and has been a contributor to Crain's and several national publications.

In a Saturday Facebook post, Foley said he'll be responsible for making sure "small triumphs" in the city's neighborhoods "are celebrated on the same level as whatever building Dan Gilbert is buying this week."

"The black-owned business that never gets press? It'll be my job to give it to them," Foley wrote. "The old lady on the block that's been holding it down for 40 years? It'll be my job to interview her."

Foley will develop a new web platform for sharing news about Detroit's neighborhood, Kadushin said.

The information also may be published in printed form for residents without internet access.

Duggan, who is seeking re-election this year, recently disclosed plans to hire a Detroit journalist to go "back to old-fashioned things like newsletters" for older and low-income residents during a March 1 chat with Gilbert at a Quicken Loans Inc. company meeting at Cobo Center.