This forum has explored repeatedly the decline of traditional media. The latest Newsweek touches on one aspect of the subject as well, with an article focusing on bloggers who run rings around traditional media outlets in covering local news:
Millburn is ground zero in what is fast becoming America’s first post-newspaper media war. Dailies like the nearby Newark Star Ledger or The New York Timesonce had local reporters who’d cover places like Millburn, but as newspapers’ finances have unraveled, coverage of outlying villages has shrunk: in April the Times cut its news sections for New Jersey, Connecticut, Long Island, and Westchester County, N.Y., to one page. In the last year, however, a group of community-focused blogs, run by journalists but relying heavily on citizen-commentators, have risen up to take their place. For them, no event is too local.
