Tell Us What You Like

Mar. 15: The State of the News Media
Mar. 2: Lessons to be Learned by Legacy Media
Feb. 18: New News Site Mirrors Others

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Things We Like

Crowdsourcing Subway Trouble

Metro: D.C.-area start-up, TBD.com, is pulling together specific complaints about Metro outages and issues into a map, as the transit system has been plagued with delays and safety concerns. Previous coverage of TBD's launch.

Mapping the BP Oil Spill

Grassroots Mapping: After the oil leak in the gulf, cartographers flew into action creating oil spill maps using weather balloons and kites.

Street Artists Across the City

Graffiti: When the Seattle Times started reporting on graffiti in the region, they turned to their partners in the community to help tell the story and gave readers a chance to report trouble areas on a Google Map.

New WSJ New York Section Engages on Foursquare

Interactive: On the same day the Wall Street Journal launched its new local section to compete with the New York Times, it also debuted WSJ-themed badges up for grabs by Foursquare users.

Snowmageddon: The Clean Up

Interactive: As the Washington, D.C. region digs out from the "Snowmageddon", as some took to calling it, the Washington Post partnered with PICnet and Non-Profit Soapbox to create a special digging out section. It invites users to report problems and offer solutions to their neighbors. It even points out "cleanup parties".

Online Media Legal Network

Online Media Legal Network: a network of law firms, law school clinics, in-house counsel, and individual lawyers throughout the United States willing to provide pro bono legal assistance to qualifying online journalism ventures and other digital media creators.

Chicago Talks

Chicago Talks: Chicago Talks is using a StoryMap from outside.in to display where their latest stories are coming from. It's easy to get one for your own site, too.

Stories That Fly

3-D Video Wall: The Web site, created by a 2008 New Voices winner, features a beautiful 3-D image wall. Get yours here.

The Morning Commute

Welcome to SUBWAYblogger.com: If a funny thing happened on the way to work in Manhattan today, you might hear about it here. This site offers live blogging, news, photos and cultural commentary from the NYC city subway system.

Chicago's Windy Citizen Site

Making Sense of Chicago. Together: Hyperlocal site aggregates 36 Chicago beat blogs and encourages residents to post links from the city's rich and diverse local media, vote and discuss these stories. The most popular stories wind up on the front page and are delivered to subscribers via RSS, twitter and email.
"Windy Citizen lets you share and discover the best local news, events, photos and videos and read original reporting on Chicago people, places and issues."

Urban Milwaukee

Riverwest Neighborhood Network: This volunteer-fueled hyperlocal site provides residents of the Milwaukee community with a quality of life hotlist where they can register complaints and report everything from graffiti to abandoned cars to drug houses. The site includes maps of photos and stories posted over the past two weeks.

CCTV's Documentary on Citizen Journalism

Citizen Journalism: From Pamphlet to Blog: Watch this mini-documentary on the citizen media movement, produced by Cambridge Community Television. "The film is a guide to US citizen journalism through the ages - from Thomas Paine in the 18th century to the more modern hows and whys of being an anti-establishment news hound. The film features interviews with talking heads from the blogging world discussing, among other things, how newspapers have gone through major cost-cutting exercises as their revenues are leeched by sites like Craigslist."

'YouNews' on YouTube

YouTube Citizen News: YouTube is now offering a great new platform for citizen journalists to help aggregate their work and give it a much bigger spotlight. The video sharing site has long allowed users to create individual channels for their work, but now it has launched the new Citizen News Channel in mid-May and has hired a new news manager to encourage citizen journalists to contribute their work, the best of which is spotlighted in a "favorites" tab or posted in a subscription area. As of the end of May, the channel already has subscribed to 87 different citmedia feeds, and has garnered more than 350 subscribers. Among recent highlighted favorites was a piece on sexual assault in the military from CollateralNews, an independent weekly news show produced in Philadelphia, and another story on the Democratic presidential campaign in Oregon from citizen journalism reporting corps UpTake.org. Editor "Olivia" is soliciting video recommendations at .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).

Courting Citizen Legal News

California Blog of Appeal: There's certainly no shortage of lawyers commentating on the blogosphere, but a few may actually be practicing a unique form of citizen journalism, reporting on legal developments in their states with a level of detail and insight rarely found in traditional news organizations. A case in point is the California Blog of Appeal from Craig May. May is an appellate lawyer in Ventura, Calif., who writes extensively about legal developments in the California courts, including some uniquely California issues such as a case about who gets to be named as a producer on a Hollywood film. May also reported on a case involving on the constitutionality of the state's marriage laws, and on studies about the influence of the state's Supreme Court around the nation. Plus, he's got a blog roll of hundreds of other legal blogs, including many that also cover California law and courts.

'Selling' the Neighborhood

The Boston Condo Blog: It might be easy to dismiss a blog by a real estate developer as a purely promotion tool. But done right, it can also be a good example of local citizen journalism, "selling" the neighborhood in a news sense. Such a site is The Boston Condo Blog, which concentrates on the luxury market, and features news on local real estate prices, reports on up-and-coming housing developments and new listings in the market. Plus, the site profiles neighborhoods, spotlights local landmarks and walking tours, and even has covered state legislation on energy-efficient home loans.

The Call of The Wild ... and of Citizen Journalism

Confessions of a Backdoor Biologist: Amateur birders are amazingly passionate about their hobby, so it's not surprising to find numerous birding blogs on the web, including some that provide an unusual form of "field" reporting. Confessions of a Backdoor Biologist, for instance, offers field notes, tales and photos from excursions by a twenty-something birder/biology graduate student in Oklahoma. Blogger Eric Beck provides news and insights from locales in the state where rare birds are found, as well as info on state conservation efforts and local bird surveys. In fact, the site has drawn enough attention locally that it recently received a donation from a local Audubon Society group. Talk about seeding the blogosphere!

InterstateQ: Day of Silence

Interstate Q: Ordinarily, it's what citizen media sites say that make them memorable. But in this case, it's what one site is not saying. InterstateQ, a North Carolina-based site, is generally an outspoken source of news and opinion for the lesbian, gay, bi and transgender youth community. On April 25 of this year, however, its publishers effectively shut down the blog site in observance of a National Day of Silence held each year to protest anti-LGBT name-calling, bullying and harassment in schools. This year's event was held in memory of Lawrence King, a California 8th-grader who was shot and killed Feb. 12 by a classmate, allegedly because of his sexual orientation. "Think about the voices you are not hearing," asks the site. "What can you do to end the silence?"

Musings on Birmingham: One in a Million

Musings on Birmingham: What's a community but the people in it. And the Birmingham, Ala., blog Musings on Birmingham makes that explicit with a feature launched late last year it labels "One in a Million," about the people it says make Birmingham great. Its one://B'HAM subsite regularly showcases extraordinary individuals from among the million-plus in the Birmingham region. Recent examples include an award-winning Fred Astaire dance instructor, a former naval nurse, and an author of a urban fantasy vampire novel. The site offers an RSS feed for the updates and invites users to nominate others.

Rethink College Park: Interactive Maps

Rethink College Park: For a site that focuses on development news in and around its community, maps make smart navigational devices, as shown by Rethink College Park, a Maryland-based project that focuses on the area surrounding the University of Maryland in College Park. A roll-over map on the site's upper right corner gives users a quick grounding in issues for half-a-dozen distinct areas around the university, while a quick click of the map takes you to stories sorted by location. Another interactive project on the site is a College Park development map, which uses a Google map-based approach to pinpointing projects, with links back to relevant posts.

Okiedoke: Pioneer Spirit

Okiedoke: Sometimes bringing attention to yourself means focusing the spotlight on others. And that's something Oklahoma's Okiedoke blog does with homespun style through its annual Okie Blog Awards. The winners and runners up in such categories as best overall blog ("Confessions of a Pioneer Woman -- City girl Ree plows through country life with style"), best political blog, best family blog, best humor blog, and best unusual blog ("BackyardBirdCamBlog -- Pat Velte has many friends, feathered or not"), are selected by fellow Oklahoma bloggers, though the final call belongs to Okiedoke.

Mel's Internet Universe: Hawaiian Twitter

Mel's Internet Universe: Mel's Internet Universe, a solo blog on Hawaiian issues, features everything from news of proposed tax packages to local car shows, along with commentary on local transit and the politics of grazing rights. But when there's no news to post, Mel updates users on his goings-on via a Twitter feed on his home page. Mel is also a talented photographer and the site includes his extensive photo work, which is fed onto the site via Flickr and also featured on a separate photo blog that spotlights not just the obligatory gorgeous sunsets, but images of local store closings, politicians, memorial services and museum openings. Aloha!

BlogHouston: Tracking Traffic

BlogHouston: blogHouston is a hyperlocal site focusing on Houston-area media, politics, and life, not to mention that bane of urban existence -- traffic. One of blogHouston's more useful features is a map widget providing a local traffic map from the Greater Houston Transportation and Emergency Management Center (Transtar). Once in, you can also access traffic cams and check road closures and construction updates. blogHouston also squeezes onto its far right column a nice hotlinked feed of "accolades" for (and criticism of) its site from local bloggers, a step up from the usual blog honor roll approach.

15211: Survey Says ...

15211: Sometimes simply asking people to register their view has real appeal. And when it comes to such online surveys, the nicely designed 15211 Wordpress blog from Pittsburgh's Mt. Washington neighborhood has its prominently displayed on the upper right side of all its pages, along with a poll archive for its dozen or so past polls. Some of the results are a little lopsided, but no one said they were scientific, just entertaining!

Perfect Duluth Day: Where's My WiFi?

Perfect Duluth Day: If it takes a sense of humor to live in Duluth, then the Perfect Duluth community blog has what it takes, with an amusing array of links, photos, videos and some citizen journalism-style Duluth News in the mix. But the site has a smart, practical bent too - witness its Wiki list of free WiFi hot spots in the Duluth area so its contributors can more easily post their entries. The hot spot list can also be viewed via Google Maps.

Outside.In: Local, Local, Local

Outside.In: Neighborhood discussion boards taken to the extreme is the M.O. of Outside.In, an aggregator looking to initiate local online chat while indexing posts to all relevant geographic levels. The site says it's tracking news, views and conversations in nearly 12,000 towns and neighborhoods, and its home page lists more than five dozen communities being mapped. One example is Madison, Wisc., which features discussion threads on overhyped neighborhoods, best bars and restaurants and a half-dozen more, as well as more serious news about local crime, including the recent murder of a local resident. Also, Outside.In uses a nice graphic to show spikes in posts by category, and it occasionally poses ice-breaker questions to all cities to help along the process of building online community.

FreshDaily Network of City Sites

FreshDaily: Freshdaily is a small Canadian network of metro hyperlocal sites that smartly covers arts, music, film, fashion, food and news in Toronto, Vancouver and Montreal. Among the cool features are the Toronto site's use of a Google-based Toronto Map, as well as arts podcasts and movie podcasts. The site has an easy-to-use tabbed sidebar "Buzz" feature showing most commented, most recommended and most viewed items, and a rotating banner photo image with drop-down details. In addition, the site's "Contribute" page is well organized, offering nine different ways for contributors to participate.

Hamden Daily News High School Sports Coverage

Hamden Daily News: School sports are at the heart of many a community, and hyperlocal site Hamden Daily News in Hamden, Conn., takes that seriously. The site features an up-to-date sports section with numerous short items about girls and boys basketball games, game calendar and recent game scores, as well as longer news reports, such as a recent one with photos on the local boys hockey team. But the site doesn't stop there -- it has two sports-related columns too. One sports column is by a former school official and features opinion, calendar items, picks and tributes. A second column by the former mayor also includes commentary on local recreation, among other issues.

Hills and Heights Blog Network in Richmond, Va.

Hills and Heights: There's a surprisingly lively network of neighborhood citJ sites in and around Richmond, Va., including a collection of 15 neighborhood news blogs under the Hills and Heights umbrella. Each site's home page has easily accessible news, calendar, classifieds, resources, and a Google crime map provided by RichmondCrime.org.

Richmond Virginia Mobile Blog

RVAMoblog: RVAMoblog is an interesting community "moblog" featuring cell phone photos of places and happenings from around Richmond, Va. The site, powered by Twitter Tools, allows registered users the ability to post, categorize and tag pictures from their cell phones, e-mail accounts, etc. Recent sample entries include images of local parks, stormy weather, events, church interiors and outdoor sculptures.

Philly Future Featured Blogger Contest

Philly Future: One local blog aggregator has a smart, community-driven way of regularly featuring community bloggers -- a contest.Philly Future, which aggregates Philadelphia-area blogs, runs an ongoing "featured blogger" nomination and voting process for independent local blogs or blogs of local interest. Registered users then select from three finalists over a two-day period. The winning blogs -- 44 so far -- are highlighted on the site for several days.

Paulding.com Forums and Blogs

Paulding.com: Community conversation is no mere marketing ploy for Paulding.com, a local news site in Dallas, Ga., that uses only forums and blogs to get its info across. More than two dozen forums and subforums cover county-wide news, people, education, sports, politics, commerce, pets and religion. And 57 member-created blogs chronicle everything from a local soap-making business to an effort to raise awareness of overcrowded dog shelters. While registration for the site is free, premium membership extends self-editing capabilities and also allows members to place classifieds.

epodunk's "American Diaspora" Map on Katrina Migration

epodunk: A brilliant example of how online forum postings can be collected into a single work of "distributed journalism" is this clickable "American Diaspora" map on Katrina migration by the Web site epodunk.com. The site, which collects hyperlocal information as a resource for thousands of small communities country-wide, says it analyzed more than 40,000 postings following the deadly hurricane to see where some of the one million residents of the affected Gulf Coast region fled around the country.

User Generated Content on Gothamist/SFist

Gothamist/SFist: Gothamist is one of the monster hits in the blogging/citizen journalism world, having expanded beyond its original, and highly successful, New York roots to 14 city-based sites in the United States, Canada, Latin America, Europe and Asia. One of the many reasons for its success is its innovative way of involving community members, including through a highly flexible "contribute" approach. For example, at SFist, recently named best Bay Area blog by San Francisco Magazine, users can contribute links through del.icio.us tags, photos through flickr tags and anonymous tips via RSS feed. All the contributions are grouped on a contribute page and the latest end up on a home page "contribute" side bar.

North Lawndale Community News Online and in Print

North Lawndale Community News: Combining local print and online well can help set apart a news organization, and a good hyperlocal example is North Lawndale Community News, published in one of the poorest neighborhoods in Chicago. The site presents an online version of its weekly newspaper side-by-side with a community news blog site, launched mid-2005, to encourage participation from its mostly African-American audience, who are invited not only to post topics to the site's blog but also can create their own.

Hyperlocal, Multi-ethnic Coverage by Twin Cities Daily Planet

Twin Cities Daily Planet: One of the more successful experiments in multi-ethnic citizen journalism is the Twin Cities Daily Planet. Based in Minneapolis, it collects material from more than 35 ethnic and community news outlets, combining professional and amateur contributions. The site covers some 30 local neighborhoods, and provides national and international headlines and a "community newswire" via RSS feeds. The TC Daily Planet also offers glimpses of local online conversations at its Planet Cafe page. A non-profit, it has a volunteer page, and a donation page with a creative array of thank you gifts, including dinner with its executive director.

"The Ins and Outs of Blogging" by Buffalo News

YourHub.com at Buffalo News: It's one thing to offer local citizens a platform on which to blog, it's another to actually show them how to do it. Such invaluable live training is the aim of an evening-long program on the "Ins and Outs of Blogging" sponsored by Buffalo News for its Buffalo.com YourHub citizen media site, which is on a platform created and made available to newspapers by the Denver Newspaper Agency. Buffalo.com staffers and guest speakers cover issues such as what is a blog, why do you blog, how do you blog, and where do you blog. It may seem basic to seasoned journalists (on the other hand, perhaps not!), but it certainly can be a challenging hurdle to the inexperienced. Hands-on training can go a long way toward jump-starting any hyperlocal site.

"Poptop" Map of Neighborhood Renovations

Renovations map by Osman Parvez: On the south end of Boulder, CO is a sprawling development of small 1950s ranch-style homes known as Martin Acres. Originally built as affordable housing for workers at the nearby now-defunct Rocky Flats nuclear weapons plant, in the 70s and 80s the neighborhood developed a lackluster, cookie-cutter reputation while much of the rest of Boulder grew more upscale. But starting in the 90s, several Martin Acres homes underwent creative and extensive renovations -- often involving "popping the top" to add a second story. Boulder real estate analyst and Martin Acres resident Osman Parvez decided to take his digital camera out for a walk. He created a Google Map of Martin Acres "poptop" renovations. "It took me about an afternoon," he said at a recent blogger meetup. "It was fun, and easier than I expected." More about this project on the Silver Fern Homes blog. Even though this project is intended to support a real estate business (so it does have a promotional role), it also plays a citizen journalism role by documenting the changing character of a community.

EastPDX News Covers Local Bridge Safety

EastPDX News: One strength of local news, including local citizen journalism, is that it can literally bring home topics from the national news. In the wake of the Minneapolis bridge collapse, EastPDX News recently did a first-class job of covering Portland, OR's heavily trafficked Sellwood Bridge. David Ashton reports, "Although the bridge is rated a 2 on a federal sufficiency scale of 100, it could be years until it is replaced." Ashton photographed a recent partial bridge inspection, and interviewed a city official for further information. He also let his readers know about the next steps in the process.

Meet The Bloggers: Civic Podcast from Cleveland

Meet The Bloggers: Since August 2005 Cleveland OH blogger George Nemeth has been interviewing local civic and government leaders on a wide range of current issues and controversies. The audio from these talks is posted to the Meet The Bloggers podcast. Occasionally other local bloggers team up with Nemeth for these chats or conduct interviews on their own. The most recent interview subjects include Congressional candidate Bill O'Neill, former Cleveland municipal "tech czar" Michael DeAloia, and union leader Harriet Applegate. An obvious homage to NBC's "Meet the Press," this format seems especially useful for coverage of local politics and issues. Best of all, questions and answers are not confined to quotes or sound bites. These are substantive conversations that delve into local history and nuances. Only quibble: The feed for this podcast does not carry the audio files. You have to visit the site to download them.

Delmar Dustpan: What's Happening Around Town

Delmar Dustpan: This little blog is a simple but good example of how a citizen journalist can chronicle life, events, and government. Howard (who doesn't give his last name), is a longtime resident of Delmar, Delaware. His blog is a good reminder that, on the hyperlocal level, even the removal of a tree can be newsworthy. Particularly useful is his coverage of local government, such as a recent Joint Council meeting and Delmar [Water] Utility meeting. He prefaces his Joint Council meeting report with, "Again, let me say this is just a summary of some items and my opinion of them. If you want to know what really happens at these meetings you should attend." -- a good bit of transparency about his role in the process.

CTA Tattler: Getting Around Chicago

CTA Tattler: More many Chicago residents, public transit is a key part of life and work. Of course, the Chicago Transit Authority (CTA) has its ups and downs, and moments of interest -- or at least weirdness -- occur regularly on CTA buses and trains. CTA Tattler chronicles the city's transit system, and its administration, from the rider's perspective. It's not all crazy commuting tales -- although that is part of of the site. Lately, CTA Tattler has been covering the impact of CTA's new Chicago Card program, which is apparently confusing and somewhat controversial among riders. CTA Tattler also publishes images from the CTA Flickr Photo Pool, where several people post CTA-related pictures.

4-H Network News: Event Coverage & More

4-H Network News: Throughout the rural U.S., the youth organization 4-H is known for its programs and events fostering leadership, citizenship and life skills -- including, it seems, citizen journalism. The blog 4-H Network News, where 4-H youth post articles, photos, and video of their activities, is worth a look if you're wondering what kids and teens can do with citizen journalism. In particular, the Sept. 19, 2007 post is a pretty good collection of interviews, event coverage, and other youth-created video from around the U.S. It's fun stuff, but the kids obviously took this project seriously, too, and present intriguing and useful information. Here, 4-H member Brooke Nowicki interviews (now former) U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Mike Johanns:

Alaskablawg: Legal News with an Edge

Alaskablawg: Some of the most interesting citizen journalism can be found on blogs written by lawyers, often called "blawgs." Alaskablawg is by a criminal defense attorney in Alaska. He doesn't give his name on the blog, but he does post his photo and says, "I work for the Office of Public Advocacy representing clients charged with serious charges throughout the State." Alaskablawg regularly cites current cases in AK state courts, linking to primary-source documents (such as court decisions), describing the action, and offering analysis and insight as well as wry opinion. This Sept 1, 2007 post, How to be excused from your trial, is educational as well as entertaining. At the end, the author is careful to document the corroboration he gathered on crucial points. So although this blog does mix opinion with news, it's pretty easy to identify the facts and where they came from.

Wicked Local

Wicked Local: The award-winning WickedLocal.com is an especially well-designed community news site, affiliated with local newspapers, that does many things right, particularly when it comes to bridging the gaps in professional coverage with user contributions. A great example is the site's Spotted photo page, which allows users to store and share unlimited photos, then organizes the contributions by category, galleries and various favorites, with side-by-side filtering of community and staff images, and "editor's picks" of best user images. Also, each WickedLocal subsite has a smartly organized "Be a Citizen Journalist" module (see upper right of linked page, plymouth.wickedlocal.com) that encourages users by grouping links to submit a story, join a forum, publish a picture, post an event, or request administrative authorities.

New Haven Independent

New Haven Independent: Inspired by the award-winning Chicago Crime web site, a local journalist in New Haven, Conn., has created a great local crime database called New Haven Crime Log. Users can sort crimes in a wide variety of ways, by type, description, count and date, and then view incidents on a map. The map shows details of each incident, severity of the crime and a time scale, as well as by individual streets or areas ranging from one-tenth of a mile to three-quarters of a mile. It's enough to keep you home all day (whether to fiddle with the site, or just to avoid the criminal element).

McHenry County Blog

McHenry County Blog:"Folksy" works well for Illinois-based McHenry County Blog's Message of the Day feature. Local users are lured back not just by cute photos, usually of a tee shirt, a street sign, a bumper sticker or a local geographic or architectural feature, but also by the simple commentary that tells us almost as much about the writer (he's colorblind, has an annoyed teenager and a fondness for outdoor movie theaters) as the topic.

Lakeland Local

Lakeland Local: An inside view of the news process helps distinguish many good hyperlocal citJ web sites. One example comes from the central Florida site Lakeland Local, which prominently posts a "personal statement" that states: "Hyperlocal bloggers must make the process as transparent as possible. The idea that journalists have a completely neutral point of view is a myth. Who and what you cover is guided by your biases and concerns. Let your audience know if you have to answer to anyone. ... Governments, organizations, and relationships operate best when processes and discussions are transparent. That's also how I operate Lakeland Local."

iTalk News

iTalk News: Fostering good citJ content and then spotlighting on it a site's front page is the M.O. for iTalkNews, a start-up outside San Francisco. iTalk uses a point system to track privileges for contributors, basing it on page views, recommendations, speed of posting. The more points the more prominently the author is featured. Another unusual aspect is allowing for, actually encouraging collaborative editing of each other's articles. And site users can make donations to their favorite authors via Paypal. Plus, it's easy to see who the Top iTalkers are, searchable by most postings, most links, most comments, most recommendations, etc.

Coeur D'Alene Times

Coeur D'Alene Times:A good example of how an online forum can be used to share news of a local community is the Coeur d'Alene board at NDNbloggers.com. It's 120-plus members have posted nearly 2,000 messages in five forums that deal with news overlooked by local media, political discussion, and highlights of weekly council meetings. Like many of online communities, things can get crazy at times, but it gives users a place to discuss issues like local politics. Sample posts address issues like class distinctions in the community, or whether education counts for more than experience when it comes to local politics.

Roundrock Journal

Roundrock Journal: Sometimes all the fancy interactive footwork just can't compare to good writing and photography, like those of outdoors rambles found on Roundrock Journal, a site that calls itself "about a little bit of forest on the edge of the Missouri Ozarks." Who would have thought tales of getting stuck in the mud or of digging in search of a cave could be so compelling.

Daily Newarker

Daily Newarker: Blog archives can sometimes be tedious affairs, that require multiple links and back-tracking. The New Jersey blog, The Daily Newarker, has an innovative "live archive" that reloads the archive page with a click on date or category, saving time and hassle.

Austinist

Austinist: Mashups aren't only for covering long-term crime and teardown trends. The Austinist uses a great Google mashup to cover the annual South by Southwest film, music and arts festival in March. The Interactive Guide to SXSW provides a day-by-day visual of events, with lots of info, graphics and links.

KevinFreitas.net

KevinFreitas.net: The journal-style site of Washington state web developer Kevin Freitas allows for a nice touch of serendipity with the more than 7,000 photos on the site -- a "photo shuffle" function that mixes up the dozen photos on the site's home page photo panel. A nice way to utilize extensive photo archives, and generate genuine curiosity.

Gotham Gazette

Gotham Gazette: For large communities rich in data, sometimes nothing tells the story so well as a map. And to steal a phrase, New York's Gotham Gazette has eight million stories to tell for the naked city. Check out the site's map archive, with a dozen-and-a-half data-heavy maps of its own, ranging from community gardens to uninsured kids, plus links to other NYC map sites.

SLV Dweller

SLV Dweller: The changing landscape of a local Colorado community is on view via a collection of webcams at slvdweller.com. The San Luis Valley site has its own webcam, and also spotlights images from webcams at other nearby locations, including the local ski area.

RedBankGreen

RedBankGreen: There's nothing like contests to keep people coming, and nothing like photos to ground a hyperlocal site. Redbankgreen.com combines them smartly with a "Where Have I Seen This?" challenge, a series of images (41 at last count) challenging visitors to see how well they know their New Jersey community.

NYC Bloggers

NYC Bloggers: Perhaps only in a city as dense with blogs -- and subway stops -- as New York could a web site physically map them using transportation lines as the template. That's what NYCbloggers.com does, charting blogs along 25 subway lines in the five boroughs. Each subway stop details blogs at that location, some with dozens of links. You can search by borough, subway line or a-to-z.

L.A. Voice

L.A. Voice: Given how little actual reading tends to happen on the web, it helps to have a smart set of icons to help visitors understand at a glance what they're getting in a post. A particularly good example can be found on lavoice.org -- check out their topic list, with graphically depicted categories such as "drive," "environment" and "media."

e:strip

e:strip: This Buffalo, N.Y. site showcases not only the great community it has generated since launching as a journaling site in 2003, but also the visual smarts of the web designer who built it. Examples include the "7 day comment" graph that shows e:strip comments per 24 hours, and the top banner that tracks site stats such as words (approaching 4 million), images (nearly 18,000) and mobile device postings (about 1500).

The Columbia Record

The Columbia Record: This online community created by South Carolina's largest daily, The State, is chasing the local blogging community in a big way, with more than two dozen bloggers in its stable. They range from an audio blog by a local naturalist, in NatureNotes, to the experience of an Army reserve returning to the states after her oversease deployment, in "My Afghanistan Experience."

Seaside-Sun

Seaside-Sun: What captures the life of a beach town better than an evening sunset? The Seaside-Sun.com of Seaside, OR, has a nice "Spotted" photo feature with a gorgeous gallery of sunsets by the dozens, and encourages townies to send in snaps not just of local news, travels and "shameless promotion," but also of family, friends, and moms. Guaranteed traffic-builder!

Cool Cleveland

Cool Cleveland: Talk about reaching the audience of tomorrow -- CoolCleveland.com in February turned an occasional kids-related podcast into a regular weekly feature, Cool Cleveland Kids Podcast. Kid correspondent Max reports on quality family entertainment from music to arts and events.

Around Carson

Around Carson: Most places have an interesting history, often ignored, but Around Carson does a model job capturing the fascinating story of Nevada state capital and silver boom town Carson City with a "Then and Now" feature that contrasts historical images of local buildings and street scenes, with up-to-date pictures of the same, along with background text.

UV Scene

UV Scene: The vibrancy of the small towns in the Upper Valley of the Connecticut River between New Hampshire and Vermont is captured by uvscene.com, a well organized site that includes lots of cool Web 2.0 features like user blogs, meetup clubs, flickr pictures, as well as a tag cloud. But it doesn't ignore basics, like backgrounders on the towns themselves and FAQ-style About page. Return visits are encouraged by a weekly Monday 411 rundown of upcoming events, and a Friday Five reader survey feature.

Palo Alto 360

Palo Alto 360: CitJ isn't just about text! Palo Alto 360 is a hyperlocal podcast about Palo Alto, CA, by resident Barbara Anthony, who features interviews, local culture and entertainment, events, local news and current affairs, quizzes, etc. Supported by a weblog.
Podcast feed: http://paloalto360.com/?feed=rss2

ibrattleboro

ibrattleboro: This wiki is an adjunct of the prolific citizen journalism/community site ibrattleboro. "Whereas ibrattleboro is good for breaking news, the Brattleboro Community Brain Trust is for information that changes more slowly (Town government), or very little (history)." This is a great way to expand the relatively short attention span that online local news, issues, and discussions often have in venues such as blogs where older stories scroll off the main page quickly.

Hoboken 411

Hoboken 411: In recent years Hoboken, N.J. has become a lively, upscalish adjunct of Manhattan. Hoboken 411 is a rich community weblog and resource site, very popular with locals. Of course, crime is a top concern to residents - so Hoboken 411 has used Yahoo Maps to create an interactive "incident map" of crimes, fires, and other incidents in the city. Click on a map pin, and it shows a summary of the relevant Hoboken 411 coverage, with a link to the full story. View map of streets only, or with satellite photos.

Baristanet

Baristanet: This northern N.J. site always gets mentioned as a great example of community-focused citizen journalism - for

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J-Lab is currently running it’s annual Knight-Batten Awards for Innovations in Journalism, if you’d like to enter your blog into that competition. There is a $10,000 Grand Prize as well as a $1,000 Citizen Media Award that your blog might be a good fit for. The deadline is this Wednesday (June 11) and the entry fee is $40. You can find out more by going to http://www.j-lab.org/guidelines.shtml

Comment from Craig Stone at 8:15 am on 6/09/08

Excellent selection of sites. I got some really cool ideas from this post.

Comment from Eric Peyton at 1:54 pm on 4/30/10