Call For Community Board Bloggers
There’s been a lot of discussion in recent weeks about the decline of newspapers and whether blogs will be able to pick up the slack as newspapers cut back in general and on their local coverage in particular. We’d like to try to take one step to address this issue by increasing our coverage of…
There’s been a lot of discussion in recent weeks about the decline of newspapers and whether blogs will be able to pick up the slack as newspapers cut back in general and on their local coverage in particular. We’d like to try to take one step to address this issue by increasing our coverage of what’s happening at the community board level. To that end, we’re putting out a call for people who would like to cover their community boards. All we’d expect is that you’d make it to the general meeting every month plus the odd land use, transportation or parks & recs committee meetings when there’s something particularly juicy on the agenda. No formal journalism skills are required. Reliability, attention to detail and some common sense should be all you need. You could be in grad school or a grandparent, we don’t care; and you should own a digital camera. There will be a modest stipend for each report but don’t expect to retire on it. If you’re interested, please email brownstoner@brownstoner.com with “Blogger: CB #” in the header (substitute whatever community board number you want to cover for the “#” symbol). Let’s see how this goes…Update: Thanks to everyone who’s emailed already. Keep ’em coming! We’re going to let the dust settle before getting back to everyone directly in the next couple of days.
I think it’s a solid idea too
It’s in incentive to be more proactive in your local community.
Hate to sound positive… but I think this is a great idea. Everyone knows that living and working in NYC is about hustling and jumping at very opportunity. This is a open door to be published in MEDIA which gets picked up OFTEN by traditional media all the time.
Brownstoner is in fact a business. Businesses should evolve, this is a smart and innovative step. One more step towards the creating a lifestyle as a brand, then, “sell” that brand (info) to interested parties by way of the web site. Smart.
You wouldn’t be on here commenting all the time if you didn’t buy in
great idea, Jon. We know its not journalism and that’s fine. But it gets us more involved and maybe even more proactive in community affairs- always a good thing. Let the naysayers have their whining- I always find it a hoot that those who complain the loudest still have to come here to play. Bet that pisses them off even more.
If it wasn’t about money, why Mr. Brownstoner quickly replied to this posting. I don’t usually read any comments after the postings. Yes, it’s about money. This is a business. There is clearly a big crisis if you want to work to get paid enough to grab some food and a couple of beers. Good luck to you! I am just tired of this type of discussions.
brownstoner:
dont get your knickers in a bunch.
take your shots while the feeling out of the new world order is in play.
everyone is entitled to take their own shot. let the complainers take theirs(fat chance). seems to me you are paying more than nothing. its a free market. let the old guard complain and die. its not like the CB meetings were getting covered anyways.
right on
Jinx, Mr. B. You owe me a coke.
When was the last time any major paper regularly sent its salaried reporters to all of brownstone Brooklyn’s community boards? The lack of regular CB coverage in the NYT or NYP is not a symptom of mainstream journalism losing out to the “interwebs.” This is ordinarily the stuff of the Park Slope Courier and the like. How much does it pay to cover CB6 for one of the local free weeklies (which are also businesses). This is below the radar stuff and it might be nice to see a more blog-like take on what goes on at the community boards, rather than the one-paragraph voiceless blurbs you often get in the local weeklies. Perhaps a CB member wants to blog as a participant. Would be interesting.
Hey, last time we checked The Times wasn’t paying any of the community bloggers on either of its Local blogs anything at all! We’re going to pay $25 per CB report which is $25 more than someone interested in the meeting would have gotten for attending before and enough to grab some food and a couple of beers afterward. Plus, it’s a chance for them to publish something on a blog that gets more online readership that all the Brooklyn newspapers combined. No one’s got a gun to their head either. As newspapers have started to realize, you can’t run a business paying people full-time salaries and health benefits to cover this kind of stuff. The entire industry is in flux and this is just one experiment with one model of doing things. We’ll see if it works.