Students and faculty from the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism are teaming up with reporters and editors at The New York Times to attempt to discover a new model for community coverage. The goal is to use interactive tools and technologies to help form citizen networks that would disseminate local news and information.

Through its New York Hyperlocal News Project, the CUNY J-School will work with the Times exclusively in the Brooklyn community of Fort Greene. The team of student and professional journalists will not only cover the neighborhood themselves, but will support the creation of independent blogs and web sites that focus on Fort Greene.

The CUNY J-School has applied for a major foundation grant to help fund the project.

The Times, which is calling its hyperlocal product The Local, will be doing similar work in another section of Brooklyn, Clinton Hill, as well as in three towns in New Jersey — Maplewood, Millburn, and South Orange. In each of its pilots, it will have one journalist reporting but also working with the community in new ways.

To learn more about this groundbreaking work in local journalism, read this post from BuzzMachine, the blog of the CUNY J-School’s interactive media program director Jeff Jarvis.

Podcast:
New York Times reporters talk about the hyperlocal news project on The Brian Lehrer Show on WYNC. Listen Now.