Is Your City HyperLocal?

Seattle residents are spoiled for choice when it comes to hyperlocal blogging. In addition to a couple of networks – Next Door Media {My Ballard, PhinneyWood, Magnolia Voice, Queen Anne View, Fremont Universe} and Neighborlogs {Capitol Hill Seattle, Central District News, The Southlake, etc.} there are a number of independents (e.g. West Seattle Blog). All told, there may be up to 100 blogs which focus on residential issues in and around Seattle.

Is Seattle unusual in its coverage, or are there other places that have a thriving hyperlocal blogging culture? Please comment if your neighborhood is covered.

Comments

[Pat]

Here in Wahoo, Nebraska we have WikiCity. Here's a link: http://www.wikicity.com/wiki/Wahoo%2C_Nebraska

[Dan Armstrong]

Brooklyn more so than Manhattan - actually I think it's been said that Brooklyn is the new Manhattan - but yeah, blogs in the hundreds (at least), written by nutjobs, wingnuts, wackos, wackjobs and lots of normal people too. Many are by people you'd cross the street to avoid, but there's a lot of great hyperlocal intelligence about store closings, rowdy bands of kids, community garden events, driver/pedestrian shouting matches - all the minutiae that makes life in a community so entertaining.

[Nicholas Piasecki]

Richmond, Virginia has a fair number of these. Check out http://rvablogs.com/, and look at the "Community Blogs" sidebar on the right side, which lists the major ones. Kind of amusing for a city of our (comparatively small) size.

[Fitzroyalty]

In Melbourne Australia 10 hyperlocal news sites aggregate the work of hundreds of local bloggers to deliver diverse reporting about life in the inner city areas of Australia's second largest and most culturally sophisticated city. We don't have Outside.In in Australia so I had to build them myself!

http://indolentdandy.net/brunswick/

http://indolentdandy.net/carlton/

http://indolentdandy.net/collingwood/

http://indolentdandy.net/fitzroy/

http://indolentdandy.net/stkilda/

http://indolentdandy.net/richmond/

http://indolentdandy.net/prahran/

http://indolentdandy.net/innernorth/

http://indolentdandy.net/innerwest/

http://indolentdandy.net/melbourne/

[tina]

In Ottawa, Canada we have an excellent hyperlocal blog called Apartment 613: http://apt613.ca. There's also a great weekly podcast called Around The Block: http://theblockonline.wordpress.com/.

[Jonathan]

Durham, NC is doing well with local blog coverage. Start at Bull City Rising and work through his blogroll for more: http://www.bullcityrising.com

[Miri]

Portland.

[Andria Krewson]

Seattle is unusual.

Still, bright spots exist, often in places with other media, academic and technical saturation (allowing talent to congregate.)

Concentrations: Brooklyn, Upstate New Jersey, areas around Washington, D.C., Chicago, Atlanta, San Francisco, Sacramento, maybe Miami? I assume Austin?

Beyond those places, small exceptions are making a go of it, though some other places had moments of bloom and perhaps have died down: Greensboro, N.C., once one of the bloggiest cities around, focused more on opinion, art and causes before news.

Small news exceptions are elsewhere:
Western New York: http://thebatavian.com/1917/about-batavian

Davidson, N.C., outside of Charlotte:
http://davidsonnews.net/

Easiest way to get a broad picture in the United States: Check outside.in and Everyblock (for those cities where EveryBlock operates.)

[Lance Knobel]

Dave Winer and I recently started InBerkeley: http://www.inberkeley.com/. I think there's an enormous amount of growth and development to come in hyperlocal sites. The Seattle area certainly seems ahead of the pack.

[Maureen]

My neighborhood in the Mission in San Francisco is covered by a blog called Mission Mission (http://missionmission.wordpress.com/). I would think SF would be on par with Seattle's hyperlocal coverage.

[Justin Carder, Neighborlogs]

There are two Neighborlogs sites operating in Portland OR but most sites using our neighborhood news blogging service are in Seattle.

We're looking to expand our beta, however -- http://neighborlogs.com

[Matt McGee]

I'd guess that Seattle is in the first tier of hyperlocal blogging, but they're not alone. The folks at outside.in had a regular blog feature going last year where they picked a city and listed many of the most popular hyperlocal blogs. They were usually posted in this category:

http://blog.outside.in/category/news/dept-blogiology/

I suggested they do one for Seattle, but I don't think they ever got to it.

[David]

What is hyperlocal?
Would http://www.birminghamitsnotshit.co.uk/links qualify?