June 10, 2002

8:34 AM

What's not on the net? Here's an example. On Saturday night the town center of Capitola was shut down because of the discovery of a number of devices believed to be pipe bombs. Locally, this was a huge story but it didn't get much play in our local paper even though Capitola is only six miles south of Santa Cruz. On Sunday, police figured out the the devices were not bombs. The San Jose Mercury (35 miles and a mountain range away from Capitola) published a story but so far nothing from our local newspaper. The story was never big enough for national new sources like cnn, moreover and local usenet groups are flooded with offensive drivel. Where do you go on the web for reliable, timely local news?
posted by rdr (6 comments total)

This brings up the issue of the importance of having multiple news sources. El Andar out of Santa Cruz has challenging material, but it's not all local. When I lived in Santa Cruz, people looked to the weeklies for material that the Sentinel either ignored or simply missed out on.

I don't know of any across-the-board answer on how to find local news. For general and international news, I've had to resort to putting together a news surf page [self-link] because I don't have access to Lexis-Nexis.

We have yet to realize the potential of public access TV channels and public radio for independent, non-commercial broadcast news coverage. If you want to get full local police blotter coverage, you may need to put together your own web site. I've seen bloggers with good state and local politics coverage out of Columbus, OH, and TN, but can't pull them up on the spot. Anyone else spotting notable local news bloggers out there?
posted by sheauga at 9:13 AM on June 10, 2002

see, one could post a local story that seems big. (bombs are big news now to put it bluntly) my point is not all news makes the big time. see, post local 'brouhaha's and you have alot of gabbing, lost sleep and spilled coffee. so what where the bombs...a pipe fitters truck hit a pothole, some persons idea of a sick joke, a mistaken citizen-local police use prudence...?

Where do you go on the web for reliable, timely local news? the local paper, a local 'source' usually taking the nefarious guise as.... friend. (sarcasm)

no, i think this a good question. where does one go, i kinda know what that means. i have an answer.

'30 spokes
share one hub'

-Lao-Tzu
posted by clavdivs at 9:20 AM on June 10, 2002

... and, sarcasm aside, this is why local papers have a good future online; because only they have the staff to cover news like this. they just have to learn how to work around that pesky deadline. i mean, you could try tv stations or radio outlets, but they get most of their news from newspapers anyway.
posted by krewson at 9:33 AM on June 10, 2002

reliable, timely local news...
is a fairy tale.
posted by quonsar at 9:56 AM on June 10, 2002

The Washington Post is my local paper. I find it adequate.
posted by NortonDC at 10:57 AM on June 10, 2002

Here in Charlottesville, I've set up cvillenews.com. (Server has moved to a new location, DNS still updating, so you can't visit it right now.) It's your basic /.-style system, and I think it's proven to be an excellent method of making news a give-and-take, community-based system. I'd like for it to be more MeFi-like, but that's a ways off.
posted by waldo at 1:47 PM on June 10, 2002