By: Sam Chamberlain Taking democratization of the news to a new level is NYC.is, a Web site devoted to New York-related stories that lets readers determine what reports get featured on its homepage.
On the site, readers post articles, videos or pictures; readers vote on whether they like the story or not; and if the item makes the homepage a link is featured via e-mail, Twitter, and other outlets.
The person behind this concept is Susannah Vila, a 24-year old Political Science grad student at Columbia who has previously worked at The Nation and at CBS News. She runs the site as a one-woman show.
"I noticed that the only sites in the region already working to network blogs and independent reporters did not allow for any input from the audience, so I decided to make one that does," she told E&P. "The idea of democratizing local media is the crux of the project. If it were not for the front page/upcoming design, the site would not be different enough from other projects in this space to make it worthwhile."
Currently Vila makes no money from the site, though she hopes to put up targeted advertising in the near future.
"As I build up a stronger base of users I hope that the Web site will become more self-sustainable," she says. "My longer-term goals are to connect with New Yorkers who are not already fluent with the Internet, or don't have readily available access, so that they can easily publish their own stories on our platform."
Check it out,
here.
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