RVANews: a fascinating experiment

Today, Oct. 31, 2007, RVANews was presented to the online public. RVANews is a worthy experiment. Now we are going to see what will happen with the next stage of a trend that has taken off in Richmond — community blogs. What is RVANews? It’s an aggregator pulling from a dozen or so local community blogs, most of […]

November 1, 2007; 12:01 AM • by FTRea

Today, Oct. 31, 2007, RVANews was presented to the online public.

RVANews is a worthy experiment. Now we are going to see what will happen with the next stage of a trend that has taken off in Richmond — community blogs.

What is RVANews?

It’s an aggregator pulling from a dozen or so local community blogs, most of which have been in operation for a few months, some less time than that. The first in this metro area was John Murden’s Church Hill People’s News. The newest of them, River District News, just began today (Halloween).

The Fan District Hub is in on this with booth feet. The list of community blogs (several of them launched by Murden and handed off to a willing publisher) other than the Hub that are also participating in the RVANews experiment is as follows:

The RVANews format will also offer original material from local freelance writers. If this part of inventor/publisher Ross Catrow’s ambitious venture maintains a professional level, who knows where this experiment will lead?

Given the recent trend, there’s an obvious void to be filled. Radio stations no longer have news teams covering local stories. Television news is mostly national. Newspapers all over the country are shriveling; they’re covering less homegrown news.

The beauty of this way to get an eclectic take on local news is that it is free and it is always there; one is not obligated to watch or listen at a certain time.

News from the bottom up, rather than the top down, could be what’s happening tomorrow. Stay tuned…

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