Sites Offer News and Information, Written By and For Local Residents
NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Mar. 2, 2009--
NYTimes.com
announced today the launch of The
Local, community news and information Web sites for residents of Clinton
Hill and Fort
Greene in Brooklyn, N.Y., and Maplewood,
Millburn
and South
Orange, N.J.
The sites will feature posts by New York Times journalists and community
members about everyday life in their neighborhoods, including news and
information about schools, restaurants, businesses and real estate, as
well as economic life, crime, government services, transportation,
volunteer opportunities, outdoor activities, parenting issues and more.
The sites are a pilot project that is part of an exploration by The
Times of ways to extend its journalistic values to serve and engage
audiences in new ways. For the Brooklyn sites, The Times is blending its
community journalism initiative with one being undertaken by the City
University of New York Graduate School of Journalism. The school will
collaborate with The Local in Clinton Hill and Fort Greene to teach
residents about reporting and the use of interactive media. CUNY
journalism students will contribute to The Local and help area residents
contribute. The students will also maintain a blog about the pilot
project as a way to share their findings with educators and journalists.
Some students will also have summer internships working on The Local.
“We’ll be reporting on the big concerns in these communities, from deer
hunts to property taxes, crime to school budgets,” said Jim Schachter,
editor for digital initiatives, The New York Times. “And we’ll be
striving to empower residents to report on their own communities, as
well as to contribute their creativity and ideas.”
Features of The Local will include:
-
Calls for citizen engagement, such as posts that mobilize users to
research or resolve a local problem.
-
Creative works by people in the communities, including short films,
poetry, sermons, book chapters, short stories and multimedia artwork.
-
Community contributors posting on topics such as the challenge of
running a small business during the economic downturn, keeping a green
home, local fitness opportunities and the small pleasures of
neighborhood life.
-
Questions and Answers with interesting and important people in the
communities.
-
A virtual refrigerator of art submitted by neighborhood children.
-
A calendar of neighborhood events submitted by users.
-
Announcements of lifecycle events submitted by users, including
wedding announcements, photos, news tips and death notices.
-
“SeeClickFix,” an online service created by developers and
entrepreneurs in New Haven, Conn., that encourages users to improve
their neighborhood in three steps: See – a nonemergency issue in your
neighborhood; Click – open a ticket describing the issue and what can
be done to resolve it; Fix – publicly report the issue's resolution.
-
Local Real Estate – a map-based module linking to The Times’s real
estate site that shows properties for sale or rent in the relevant
communities.
You can access The Local by visiting the following addresses:
According to Nielsen Online, NYTimes.com had 21.6 million unique
visitors in the United States in January 2009, and was a top five
current events and global news site.
About The New York Times Company
The New York Times Company, a leading media company with 2008 revenues
of $2.9 billion, includes The New York Times, the International Herald
Tribune, The Boston Globe, 16 other daily newspapers, WQXR-FM and more
than 50
Web sites, including NYTimes.com,
Boston.com
and About.com.
The Company’s core purpose is to enhance society by creating, collecting
and distributing high-quality news, information and entertainment.
This press release can be downloaded from www.nytco.com
Source: The New York Times Company
The New York Times Company
Diane McNulty, 212-556-5244
diane.mcnulty@nytimes.com
or
Carolina
Valencia, 212-556-5936
carolina.valencia@nytimes.com
