I did a strange thing this week. I launched a newspaper – in my spare time. It’s called The Cambridge Reporter and it can be found at www.cambridgereporter.ca. I’m pretty proud of it but I hope you’ll give me some honest feedback about it.
Why?
An excellent question. A big part of me wants to say "Because I could." and leave it at that. The technology available to those who know how to wrangle it makes something like the new Reporter shockingly easy to execute. My reasons, though, are deeper than that. Two things drove me to do this:
- Cambridge is woefully under-served in the local news department. The ‘local’ regional daily doesn’t quite do Cambridge justice and the free thrice-weekly has a habit of breaking news 48 hours too late.
- The history associated with the name "Cambridge Reporter" is just too rich to let fade out of our civic memory. The old Cambridge Reporter closed its doors in 2003 after 157 years of telling the stories of my city. The closing of the paper was a shock to Cambridge and came at the hands of the owner of the two aforementioned papers – do the math. An excellent eulogy of the old Reporter was written by Karen Robock in 2004 at the Ryerson Review of Journalism.
What’s next?
Well, the goal of the paper is to tell EVERY story there is to tell about the life and times of the people of Cambridge. I obviously can’t do that all by myself (and keep my job) so I need volunteers – lots of ‘em. The plan is to activate the people in Cambridge who care about what’s going on in their city to write about what’s going on in their city. It won’t be easy and finding those first few Cambridge ‘enthusiasts’ will be key. In the meantime, I’ll spend an hour or so each evening culling the headlines of the day and posting those that are relevant to my Cambridge neighbours.
If you happen to live in (or near) Cambridge and want to help out, PLEASE get in touch.
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Nicely done! Good example of “just do it” in action.
BTW – I hope you’re using AideRSS in there to help rank posts.