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Many readers of this blog know that I am a huge fan of "placeblogging" or "hyperlocal". I believe that the future of community newspapers will be found on the web where residents will blog about local issues that matter to them and someone will aggregate it up in a way that makes it easy for the average citizen to keep track of what's going on.

The New York Times has a story today on exactly that happening in various suburbs around the NY Metro area. I sent the link to the team at outside.in, our portfolio company that provides tools and services for placebloggers and local newspapers that want to leverage placeblogging, and a consumer facing service for people to track their neighborhoods.

Turns out they had already read the story and blogged about it on the outside.in blog. Mark Josephson, outside.in's CEO, writes:

This is where placebloggers come in.  They can, and do, cover news and info at the neighborhood level.  The ease of the publishing platform (blogs) and the acceleration of monetization via networks and targeted ad sales are making this a much more viable way to spend time (as the NYT describes).

We track thousands of these sites and are witnessing first-hand how successful they are and how fast this segment is growing.

Hyperlocal/placeblogging is a tough nut to crack but it's such a worthwhile one because when it is cracked, a whole new way of covering a community will result. The community will cover itself.