I used to read Paul Bass's stories in an "alt weekly" that is now owned by one of the nation's biggest media corporations... but I just discovered that Paul found an alternative to "alternative" last fall -- starting his own professional news site rooted in local news reporting.
His enthusiasm and optimism come through here, in "About the Online Journalism Project":
The new journalism is happening on the Internet, and
it is happening in local communities--picking up the pieces of a mission
abandoned by media corporations that bought up local newspapers and
radio stations, merged newsrooms, created monopolies, eviscerated
editorial budgets, and abandoned the in-depth, knowledgeable,
passionate, grassroots news reporting vital to the health of a
democracy.
His goal is to organize "the development of professional-quality hyperlocal and issue-oriented online news websites," starting in the city where he has been a reporter for 25 years. His project is underway, using a new funding model partly borrowed from National Public Radio. I'll be visiting his New Haven Independent from time to time to see how it's working out. Here's more about what he and his colleagues are trying to do.
No one made an official tally, but Paul's optimism about keeping journalism alive on the Web easily got one of the biggest rounds of applause at the Media Giraffe Project conference today.
Other attendees are blogging more of the program, including Jeff Jarvis, Editors Weblog and more... Jay Rosen posted some comments before co-moderating one of the first panel discussions, and his headline about readers as "th nthe event began, and his headline became something
10:57:03 AM 
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