This week the New York Times launched two new hyperlocal news sites entitled The Local in New Jersey and in Brooklyn, each supervised by an NYT staff member with content provided by local citizen journalists. According to the Local sites, they will provide "news, information, entertainment and informed conversation about the things that matter to you, your neighbors and your family, from bloggers and citizens who live, work and create in your community -- as well as journalists from The New York Times."

Senior editor of Editor and Publisher Joe Strupp, who reported last week on the launch of the local sites, discusses the New Jersey site in an article yesterday. The Local covers three communities in New Jersey, including Maplewood, the town where Strupp and his family reside. The Maplewood site provides daily updates by local residents and includes children's artwork, comments, and photos. However, points out Strupp, the Local is not the only site covering the voices of Maplewood's community. Not only has the chatboard site Maplewood Online existed for years, but within the past two months Strupp himself started the news blog Maplewoodian.com and a few weeks later, Patch.com sent a full-time reporter to oversee its new blog the Maplewood Patch. Strupp seems to strike an ironic tone when he muses, "Our little 23,000-population township has expanded from one non-news site to four mixing news and opinion.

Unlike Strupp who created his blog out of frustration with the weekly paper, the NYT hopes to make a profit with its local news sites. As other large news providers, such as the Huffington Post, strive to expand on the local level, the Maplewood example raises questions as to how great the market is for local news blogs and just how many teams of community journalists the demand will support. The preexisting Maplewood blogs could compete with the NYT and impede its experiment with local news coverage and local advertising, especially since the Times, like the amateur sites, uses citizen journalists to cover local stories. However, perhaps the NYT label and head staffer will give the Local's blog a professional edge and more credibility over the others.

Source: Editor and Publisher