US: NYT enhances blog to include public records, audio profiles

Posted by Sarah Schewe on July 23, 2008 at 7:28 AM

The New York Times will be expanding City Room, one of the news site's most popular blogs, to include public records.

NYT is currently developing a feature which will "highlight hard-to-get, but telling documents," such as court records and confessions, wills, law enforcement material, ancient city and financial records and "who knows what else."

"I have long been an admirer of The Smoking Gun Web site," said Metro Editor, Joe Sexton, in his recent Talk to the Newsroom column. "We're going to try to take a stab at having some of that fun and impact."

Sexton also noted that the blog will soon include "audio profiles -- short, unexpected narratives told in the first person by a wide range of New Yorkers... The first is a pharmacist who has worked on the Lower East Side for four decades, and so far survived the neighborhood's transformation."

Source: Poynter