Local News

I heard that there was a shooting in the village last night. So I went to outside.in and found out the details. What a mess.

While at outside.in, I also found out that The Coffee Shop, my favorite breakfast place was closed for health violations. When I showed up there last week to meet a friend, we saw a sign saying "closed for renovations". Now I know the truth. Ugh.

While both these stories are interesting in their own right, the point I am making is that keeping track of your local news is getting easier on the Internet. You can even subscribe to a feed of local news in outside.in if you like to get your news that way.

Comments

[ack]

Also easy to get a locals perspective. An old coworkers wife happen to be eating right by the shots last night.

[TheBillfold]

I love this outside.in - signed myself up immediately. Thanks Fred.

[Rich]

The closing of the Coffee Shop and other high profile restaurants is a reaction by the city to the embarrassment of the KFC/Taco Bell rat infestation story (which became a national story). The backlash is not just limited to restaurants - other businesses that require approvals from city agencies are feeling pressures to adhere to standard processes, follow the letter of the law, etc.

[Elliot]

Speaking of health code inspections, if you're travelling through the Denver area try out these mashups of Judy's Book and Citysearch.

They integrate information from the city health code inspection DB into restaurant listings. An example page showing health code violations is here.

[Jeffrey McManus]

As a former local news guy turned internet guy, I have to say that outside.in is a neat site (I subscribed to the feed for my neighborhood in SF). But it doesn't seem like a replacement for local news to me. When I was reporting the news I did stuff like spent days with families whose kids were deploying to the Persian Gulf in 1991, hounded the city council for weeks until they put in a stop sign at the corner where an 8-year-old boy was killed crossing the street on the way to school, and exposed price-gouging by the local water board during a drought (which caused the whole board to be recalled by the voters). Sadly, I don't see bloggers (or blog aggregators) contributing to that kind of reporting.

We know why this is -- putting feet on the street doesn't seem scalable to investors or entrepreneurs. I am nervous about the decline of traditional journalism both at the local and national level in this country (as opposed to echo-chamber blogging). I wish there were a business model that would support it.

[James Nicholson]

I've been following the development of outside.in closely and I like many of the things they've done.

The one thing I'm not clear on is how they will differentiate themselves from a site like Topix.net, which already supplies local news in a great deal of detail and has 10 million users.

Any thoughts on this?

[Khalid H.]

This may be the reason for your coffee shop being closed:

http://www.forbes.com/feeds/ap/2007/03/14/ap3515652.html

[Altay]

Well, keeping track of your local news is certainly easier on the internet... if you live in New York City. How will outside.in "cross the chasm" to more rural areas?