The New York Times is due to announce the launch of two new hyperlocal news sites today, according to a draft statement obtained by paidContent. The site content will be provided by a network of local citizen journalists overseen by a single NYT staff member and will cover five communities in New Jersey and Brooklyn. Entitled The Local, the sites will cover all the main points of interest within and aim to attract local advertisers. The move follows an increasing number of blogs on the publication's site, and a recent collaboration with citizen journalist site Everyblock.

Speaking to Editor & Publisher, editor of digital initiatives at the NYT Jim Schachter explained the role of the NYT staffers in charge of the sites (Tina Kelley for New Jersey, and Andy Newman for Brooklyn) is to "instigate people in their communities to do their own reporting and contribute their own creativity to the community we are trying to build online". He explained that whilst they don't expect to see Times standard journalism gracing the sites, the addition of an NYT reporter is in order to bring good judgement, and the initiative is in order to see if there is a "new kind of journalism we can be part of."

Another hyperlcoal service set to launch is NBC's New York Nonstop; a 24 hour news channel. Plans for the chanel were first announced last May, but after several delays it would now appear that its launch is imminent. The channel will run 24 hours a day, 7 days a week and in an email from WNBC-4's manager Michael Horowicz, staffers were warned that their pieces "should not look like trditional news pieces... if it looks like a newscast we're dead."

Source: paidContent, Editor & Publisher, News York Observer