"BostonNOW is a new free daily newspaper launching this year that will incorporate both traditional and citizen journalism. Your ideas about the Boston community (news, politics, sports, the arts, etc.) will appear side-by-side with the words of BostonNOW staffers and wire service journalists. We will promote your work prominently both in the paper and on the website, not in a “local blogs” or “reader photos” ghetto.They're have a Boston Bloggers' Summit on March 10th to meet local bloggers. I'll be on the way to SXSW, so I can't go.
Every day, BostonNOW will direct readers to the Web, where they will find real depth and discussion. BostonNOW will become the place to learn what folks around here really think about politics, entertainment, sports, and their fellow humans. This dialogue will create a newspaper of the people, by the people, for the people.
BostonNOW will truly be your newspaper."
As a member of the Boston Blogs Network and an advisor and contributor to Universal Hub, I'll be interested to see how we all can work together to increase the visibility of alternate news and information that is written and edited by the people who read it.
David Weinberger talked about participatory culture at Beyond Broadcast where he said:
...participatory culture is changing the nature and topology of ours. It's ours in a different way. We can create works with strangers, with anonymous crowds, and in all the other ways we're inventing. This is a very different sense of ours. And it's not just that we can build Wikipedia or Flickr streams. We also get to make these works matter to one another...BostonNOW sounds like it could be something that's ours.