Focus: “It’s your town, read all about it”; 5-day week online news site covering people, cities, neighborhoods in New Haven; original reporting, links to other sites with New Haven news

Started: 2005

Staff:  13; Editor Paul Bass, a veteran New Haven reporter, Managing Editor Melissa Bailey; 4 staff writers; 5 contributing reporters; bureau chiefs in capital, outlying communities; print partnership with La Voz Hispana, state’s largest circulation Spanish paper

Funding: non-profit — donations, grants, sponsors; site is ;”produced in conjunction with the Online Journalism Project, a not-for-profit effort to promote professional-quality ‘stand-alone’ and ‘hyperlocal’ news sites on the Internet.”

Site: newhavenindependent.org

From About Us

New Haven Independent.org is rooted in and devoted to the city. We believe that democracy starts at home, with smart, thorough, in-depth local news reporting and broad citizen debate about local issues. Thanks to the Internet, journalists and news-deprived citizens need no longer be hostages to out-of-state media conglomerates. We can reclaim our communities. Power of the press now belongs not to those who own one, but to those who own a modem.

Sample stories: “After crash, cop rescued from car”; “Anti-blight bill becomes law”; “Cops arrest lab tech in Annie Le murder”

Media mentions: in New York Times story about local weekly New Haven Advocate outsourcing stories to India, “Made in India, but published in New Haven”

Focus: hyperlocal/community news in undercovered, ethnically diverse South L.A. neighborhoods around University of Southern California campus

Started: 2009

Writers/Employees: USC Annenberg School for Communication multi-media project; journalism professors and co-directors of the project are Bill Celis and Willa Seidenberg; journalism student reporters, contributors of stories submitted for print, online or radio; collaboration with school’s Annenberg Radio News, Watt Ways digital magazine and Metamorphosis project

Funding: Project chosen to receive J-Lab: Institute for Interactive Journalism grant; university-affiliated

Site: intersectionssouthla.org

The goal is to create a two-way street for South L.A. communities and the media; to generate more, much-needed stories; and to train a new generation of journalists for open-minded, culturally literate reporting.

Students working with the project will produce stories in print, broadcast and online forms. Stories will also increasingly appear in Spanish and Korean. The project will incorporate research conducted by the Metamorphosis Project for more substantive discussions about minority, ethnic and immigrant communities across Los Angeles.

Sample stories: ”New Flavors in South Los Angeles” (short video spotlighting new coffee shop, wine shop in area reflecting gentrification); “Crenshaw High School students salute arrested teacher”; “News Analysis: Proposed teacher layoffs signal deeper problems for troubled LAUSD”; “Rugby revolution is South Los Angeles”; “Storage auctions in South Los Angeles: A solution for unemployment?”

Other: USC press release on project