Brian Burns

The New York Times recently announced a collaborative project that will see the newspaper team up with journalism students and faculty from New York University.

NYTimes.com announced today a collaboration with New York University’s Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute to create a new Local community news and information Web site covering the East Village in New York City.

The initiative will cover local news from the East Village area of Manhattan. The online publication, which builds on the foundations of two NYT sponsored WordPress publications running in the neighbourhood, will be known as ‘The Local: East Village’ (or ‘LEV’).

NYU’s Jay Rosen has outlined how he envisages the project panning out in a 16 point article on the University’s ‘PressThink’ blog.

This announcement follows on from two other recent statements that has saw the NYT join forces with the Bay Area News Project in San Francisco and the Chicago News Cooperative.

Such cooperative arrangements are evidence that the leading thinkers in (news) publishing are eager to experiment with the prospect of moving towards smaller, local, niche journalism/distribution models that at first glance, seem sustainable. Other players will undoubtedly take note.

LEV is due to launch at the beginning of the next academic year. When it does make its way on to the net, be sure to check it out at: http://eastvillage.thelocal.nytimes.com.