Seattle Times Partners with Popular Hyperlocal Blogs

Posted by Helen Pitlick on
Thursday, August 27th, 2009 at 9:09 am

Yesterday, The Seattle Times announced a partnership with local neighborhood blogs as part of a year-long nationwide Networked Journalism pilot project sponsored by American University.

The Times will collaborate with Tracy Record of the West Seattle Blog and White Center Now, Kate Bergman of Next Door Media (My Ballard and Queen Anne View), Justin Carder of Neighborlogs (Capitol Hill Seattle Blog), and Amber Campbell of the Rainier Valley Post.

The Times’ participation in the Networked Journalism project is in direct contrast to the Seattle P-I’s recent foray into hyperlocal blogging. Instead of working with preexisting, independent neighborhood blogs, the P-I created their own, a move that drew much criticism from both the neighborhood bloggers and the community.

The Times and the bloggers are optimistic that the project will help all parties maximize their resources so they can do a better job at covering hyperlocal news.  “We might be able to cover more news by collaborating—maximizing all of our individual resources in a way that benefits each party as well as the communities we serve,” said Jill Mackie, V.P. of Public Affairs at the Seattle Times. “At this point, the collaboration is content related, but in the future, depending on how the partnerships develop, perhaps there could be revenue opportunities that help each organization cover costs.”

When I asked Justin Carder of Neighborlogs for a reaction, he was equally optimistic. Carder sees the partnership as a first step for newspapers towards “working with truly local independents and finding ways to collaborate instead of ways to compete.” Most of the value, according to Carder, will come from “the channel of communications that is going to be established between the Times and independent news gatherers.”

The Miami Herald, The Charlotte Observer, the Asheville (N.C.) Citizen-Times and TucsonCitizen.com are also participating in the Networked Journalism pilot. Participating newspapers will convene in a year to discuss the results of the project. Meanwhile, Seattleites look forward to reading the stories emerging from this groundbreaking collaborative effort.

Helen Pitlick has been a student in the MCDM program since spring 2009. She works with social media as an intern at Foodista.com, and in her spare time, she reviews craft beer.