Triblocal launch
The Chicago Tribune has launched a new “citizen journalism” site called Triblocal, meant to cover the Chicago suburbs.
I put citizen journalisn in quotes because they actually call them “citizen contributors.” I guess they didn’t want to let the unwashed masses think they might be on the same level.
BTW, on a recent VRM call with Doc Searls, I said I thought “community” was the right word, and Doc seemed to be okay with it. It puts everyone on the same level, IMHO. Funny thing is that’s what we called it in the nineties.
It took a corporate buzzword like “User Generated Content” to get media organizations to notice.
Anyway, Triblocal uses too many graphics in places that should be text, and could look the same with some nice CSS styling.
It also crashed Firefox once already.
I couldn’t dig too deeply since I didn’t have anything real to post, but I didn’t see much eveidence of any social features.
It look like a way to post stories, photos and events, with complimentary contributions and moderation from the editorial staff.
Not too exciting. Pretty old fashioned. I guess it’s better than nothing.
We shall see.