Small town bloggers doing it better than newspapers?
By Bob Toovey - 07 October 2009
Newsweek has an interesting article
about how small town bloggers are covering news before the local
newspapers can get a chance. In the town of Millburn (N.J. USA),
blogger Jennifer Connic covers everything, even minor traffic
accidents.
From the article, Post-Newspaper Media
Wars:Small-town news blogs
Then Jennifer Connic arrived in town.
Connic, 32, is the editor of a Web site called Millburn.Patch.com,
part of a chain of local sites called Patch.com, and since February
she's been covering mundane events in this suburban town of 20,000
residents with a zeal most journalists re-serve for a big scoop.
Connic shows up at so many auto accidents that for a time Millburn
Fire Chief Michael Roberts began going too, just so he could deal
with Connic's questions while his firefighters worked. At Millburn
town hall, town administrator Timothy Gordon often spends part of his
week alerting the Millburn Township Committee about what news Connic
is likely to break next—so they hear it from him, not from her
blog. For decades the locals got their news from a sleepy weekly
newspaper, but now, with Connic, rival bloggers, and the "citizen
journalists" they recruit walking the Millburn beat 24/7, Gordon
sometimes has trouble staying abreast of town controversies. "They
can come across problems before [town officials] know about them,"
Gordon says.
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