What They're Saying About the NYT's New Brooklyn Blog

The New York Times rolled out it's "hyperlocal" Clinton Hill / Fort Green blog -- The Local -- this week. It's a pilot project focusing down on a couple of Brooklyn neighborhoods (and two more in New Jersey, via another blog). The Times will be posting "creative works" from people in the community and drawings from local children, and will also be using student bloggers from the City University of New York Graduate School of Journalism.

Andy Newman, the Times' resident blogger, says, "There’s a growing consensus in the media world that one way that newspapers can sustain themselves is to foster what is known as participatory journalism or citizen journalism. The Times wants to see if it can find a sustainable way to do this. Your backyard is the petri dish where we will try to grow it."

Here are some comments and advice to the new blog from the Blogosphere:

- Only the Blog Knows Brooklyn: "Some advice: keep it real, do it with passion, love and a true interest in the community that you're covering. And post frequently.There are some hungry blog readers out there."

- Gothamist: "Oh, thank you so much for helping to continue the gentrification of my neighborhood by promoting it as the new cool local place for (white) people who read the NYT to be!"

Brownstoner on Techcrunch: "One big question will be whether The Times fits smoothly into the existing ecosystem of local blogs or whether it becomes seen as an 800-pound competitor soaking up the already small amounts of local ad dollars available . . . It will also be interesting to see whether The Times brand will be able to nurture enough good will on a local level to generate reader tips, the lifeblood of any good blog."

Courierpostonline: "I think the New York Times’s strategy of having staff writers and editors curate the blogs is inspired, and give these a much better shot than so many unmanaged, automated citizen journalist blogs before them."

Econsultantcy: "If it works, all those kids who have abandoned the newspaper for social media will be reborn under the banner of The Local. Why post on Facebook when you can write for the NYT? “Yo dude. See my post in The Times today?”

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