Open Letter: Streetsblog Bringing Local Coverage to Boyle Heights, South LA in 2012
Friends,
Ever since we re-booted Los Angeles Streetsblog in August of 2010, I’ve been promising a new model for Streetsblog. I wanted to move towards a more community-oriented website by adding a series of part-time writers to our existing team specifically to cover the community in which they live, work and play.
Thanks to a generous grant from the California Endowment, I am pleased to announce that in January of 2012, we’ll be opening our first “local bureaus” in South L.A. and Boyle Heights. There is a lot of work for me to do to prepare for the launch of the new bureaus (hiring writers for example), but for now I wanted to let all of you know, especially those of you that have donated your time and money to keep us afloat this last year, that we are moving forward.
In addition to bringing on new writers, we’re planning on producing local Streetfilms, having a weekly column in Spanish and creating “micro sites” off the main Streetsblog page that focus just on the South L.A. and Boyle Heights communities. I put together this page as a basic example of what a local page could look like when pitching a “Long Beach Streetsblog.” No, we don’t have any strong leads on a Long Beach project at the moment.
Our next step is for me to draft the job description and “help wanted” advertisements while beginning to reach out to existing advocates, community groups and advertisers. If you know anyone (or are anyone) who would be interested in helping us out in anyway, please drop me a line at damien@streetsblog.org. Not all of the new features are funded, and I’d like to have as many of the pieces in place as we can as soon as we can.
If you are personally interested in helping us out in the near-term, please consider pledging to our Kickstarter campaign for a Spanish Language Streetfilm for CicLAvia III. We’re over half-way there, but we also only have eight more days to reach our goal. A Spanish language film would certainly help our outreach efforts in these areas. One on CicLAvia would be especially helpful given CicLAvia’s plans to spread to South L.A. and because the event is already in Boyle Heights.
Last but not least, stay tuned for some more news on this grant a little later this week.
All the Best,
Damien
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