Here's where you can find out more about Placeblogger.
Lisa Williams is founder and editor of Placeblogger. She also runs H2otown, a placeblog and online community for Watertown, MA. Contact Lisa | LinkedIn profile.
Advisors
Dan Gillmor is the executive director of the Center for Citizen Media and author of We The Media: Grassroots Journalism for the People, by the People.
Jay Rosen is a professor of journalism at New York University and the author of the weblog PressThink. His newest project is NewAssignment.net.
Susan Mernit is Senior Director, Product Development at Yahoo! and writes an influential media/tech watcher weblog, Susan Mernit's Blog.
Technical team
Boris Mann is one of the founders of Bryght and led the technical team in designing, setting up and creating new software to make Placeblogger work. Working with Boris is David Ayre, Richard Eriksson, Colin Brumelle, Roland Tanglao, and Kris Krug.
The original design treatment for this site was created by Andrew DeVigal of DeVigal Design. Andrew is currently Multimedia Editor at The New York Times.
Thanks to: Evan Williams, Dave Winer, Tish Grier, Lisa Stone, Elisa Camahort, Jory DesJardins, Ross Karchner, The Berkman Center for the Internet and Society, the Berkman Thursday Blog Group and The Center for Citizen Media.
Initially, we thought that Placeblogger would be limited to largely Anglophone countries, not because we wanted it that way, but because of our own language limitations in being able to find and identify placeblogs in countries whose language we could not speak. We're happy to say that there has been a much larger response from placebloggers globally to add their own sites. We welcome sites from any place on the planet.
We recommend Global Voices Online very highly. Global Voices Online is a daily digest and extensive directory of non-US blogs focused on news, events, and daily life in countries across the globe.
No problem! We're happy to fix it. Send us an email. Once we get some more resources, we're considering ways to implement a "claiming" system so that you'll be able to edit your own placeblog's description whenever you want.
We're scanning new submissions for entries that don't have an RSS feed listed and entering them ourselves. If you'd like to hasten the process along, feel free to email us with the name of your site and your RSS feed.
A placeblog is an act of sustained attention to a particular place over time
It can be done by one person, a defined group of people, or in a way that’s open to community contribution
It’s not a newspaper, though it may contain random acts of journalism
It’s about the lived experience of a place
Placeblogs are sometimes called "hyperlocal sites" because some of them focus on news events and items that cover a particular neighborhood in great detail -- and in particular, places that might be too physically small or sparsely populated to attract much traditional media coverage. Because of this, many people have associated them with the term "citizen journalism," or journalism done by non-journalists.
Placeblogs, however, are about something broader than news alone. They're about the lived experience of a place. That experience may be news, or it may simply be about that part of our lives that isn't news but creates the texture of our daily lives: our commute, where we eat, conversations with our neighbors, the irritations and delights of living in a particular place among particular people. However, when news happens in a community, placeblogs often cover those events in unique and nontraditional ways, and provide a community watercooler to discuss those events.
Placeblogs spring from a fiercely non-generic America that's not about big-box retailers or the type of polarizing discussion about politics, culture, and the economy that's the product of journalism that happens at the 30,000 foot level. Often, they are a delightful and vivid look at cities, towns, and neighborhoods from an insider's point of view. Collecting this list and getting to know these places via the authentic, quirky, and funny voices of their placeblogs -- has been a wonderful experience. I hope that you'll enjoy this way of getting to know America at sidewalk level as much as I have.
Hi! My name is Lisa Williams and I run Placeblogger. If you have questions you can reach me this email address.
You can find out more about the people who have helped Placeblogger come to fruition on our About Us page.
We include dormant placeblogs in the Placeblogger directory for two reasons:
Many types of local information have a long shelf life, so even sites that are not currently being updated may contain useful information. We estimate that dormant placeblogs make up about 10% of the Placeblogger list of placeblogs.
Our research revealed that the two most common stated reasons for a placeblogger to discontinue their placeblog were expectations of community participation in their site that did not materialize, or that the placeblogger themselves was moving to a new city or town.