
‘Hyperlocal’ Web Sites Deliver News Without Newspapers - twampss
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/13/technology/start-ups/13hyperlocal.html?_r=1&partner=rss&emc=rss
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brandnewlow
The story argues that if newspapers go under, Everyblock will have a hard
time. This is a very weak point as EB's main selling point is all the non-
newspaper info and data that it makes available. They could remove all the
news and blogs tomorrow and the people I know who use it wouldn't notice.

Also, its a bit of a fine point, but Patch.com is the only real "hyperlocal"
site mentioned in the article. The rest cover entire cities rather than
specific neighborhoods or communities.

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brand
Agreed. Newspapers aren't generating the content that the 'hyperlocal' sites
are focusing on; how often does a school board meeting story come off the AP
wire? The 'trivial and irrelevant' blogs are what the sites are feeding off of
(except everyblock of course, which the writer appears to entirely
misunderstand).

How much of your traffic and content at windycitizen revolves around major
news sources, Mr. Flora? Do you think that your community would be
considerably less rich without them?

(Also, what was the address to that journalism startup aggregator that you
built? I seem to have lost the link. Many thanks!)

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brandnewlow
<http://www.jstartup.com> is the aggregator. Click the 'startups' category to
see the best collection of links to journalism startups.

To your question: A great deal of the links that people share on the Windy
Citizen are from major news sources. 40-50% is quite possible, with the rest
coming from obscure local blogs, youtube, flickr, craigslist and places like
that. So yes, we'd be affected if the newspapers "went dark" tomorrow...though
in the opposite way that people expect.

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furburger
yeah its called yahoo groups. there are thousands of little neighborhood
groups out there using yahoo groups, google groups, etc. you don't need a
dedicated site, all most people really want is a mailing list with a web ui

