The Columbia Journalism Review launched this year its News Frontier Database, meant to be a curated directory of independent online news organizations, included the two niche sites on which I collaborate. See the entire News Frontier Database here. Technically Philly was an early listing, having been contacted by CJR in March and launching in early [...]

As part of its agreement with FCC to take over majority stake in NBC Universal, Comcast pledged to, among other things, bolster local news. A half dozen NBC local affiliates, including Philadelphia, announcing a request for proposals to partner with nonprofit news organizations is just that. I’d sure hope attention is being paid by WHYY [...]

Last week I saw Mike Topel got a ‘digital content’ promotion over at Philly.com. Then he tweeted he was “starting a hyperlocal project,” and followed that up by calling for South Philly activists. It’s worth noting that I’d bet a lot of old head Inquirer folks will remind others that the paper tried something not [...]

Early last month, a contributor to the Business Insider dropped the Technically Phillly name and some other references to the Philadelphia online indie media scene: Hyper-local advertising and content. Speaking of my home base of Philadelphia, the hyper-local eco-system here features sites of every make and model. Examples: PhillySportsDaily.com leaves local sports radio 610WIP.com & [...]

About a year ago, I hadn’t come across a good list of someone trying to track all of the community news sites worth covering. So I did so myself. I only recently come across someone doing a much better job of it, so I’ll leave it to her. For the Reynolds Journalism Institute, Michele McLellan [...]

A lot of legacies over at WHYY are going to be forged with whatever comes out of Newsworks, the online news re-branding and redevelopment initiative from Philadelphia’s NPR affiliate that I first wrote about back in April. In short, NewsWorks, which had its official launch last Monday, Nov. 15, is WHYY’s new online news brand, [...]

Is Patch evil? That was the wildly well-remembered question asked by Robert Hernandez at a lunch keynote panel during the Online News Association conference, which I was able to attend. Hernandez was asking Aol CEO Tim Armstrong, whose company owns hyperlocal news and information platform Patch and who was on stage with NPR President Vivian [...]

The second annual BarCamp NewsInnovation was held last month at Temple University — see my notes here. In addition to sharing all the failures we’ve had at Technically Philly, I spoke with founder and editor Shannon McDonald about the progress we’ve had with Northeast Philadelphia hyperlocal NEast Philly, including most prominently the breakdown of where [...]

I’ve been asked a dozen times in the past few weeks what it takes to develop communities on the Web. There isn’t any scientific response, but I’ve started thinking about four Cs that come to mind. Connection — Whether it’s a geographic or topical vertical, or one strictly based around a product, organization or experience, [...]

Read more about this e-mails context here. April 21, 2010 Dear Colleagues, In January, most of you participated in a meeting with Jan Schaffer from J-Lab: The Institute for Interactive Journalism, where she presented early findings of her research on the state of public affairs journalism in Philadelphia. We appreciated the feedback that came during [...]