A New ‘Focus’ for The Nabe

This post marks an exciting transition for The Nabe. The site, which had its origins in The Local, a hyperlocal journalism experiment started by The New York Times, will become part of Corner News Media – a growing network of sites dedicated to covering Brooklyn neighborhood news with integrity and heart.

Although the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism will no longer run this site – which will be rechristened Fort Greene Focus – we’re confident this passing of the torch will stay true to the core mission of offering Fort Greene and Clinton Hill residents local news, produced by people who care deeply about the future of the neighborhood.

“Hyperlocal” journalism, as it’s called, has evolved since The New York Times unveiled The Local on a snowy day in March 2009. Nearly a year later, the CUNY J-School took over day-to-day operations of the site, working in consultation with Times editors. In May 2013, The Local ended and The Nabe began.

From the start, The Times and the CUNY J-School shared a vision to serve Fort Greene and Clinton Hill in a quickly changing media world by reporting as journalists have for decades, while engaging the community in new ways and helping the neighborhood report on itself.

That commitment to journalistic integrity will remain with the team at Corner News Media, a small independent company whose full-time staff already ably serve Brooklyn neighborhoods through Ditmas Park Corner, Kensington BK, Park Slope Stoop and South Slope News. Corner News has a lot in common with The Nabe, but it also emerged from the world of local blogging, and is focused both on quality and on serving the local community and local businesses.

In the short term, the CUNY J-School will work closely with Corner News Media during a summer-long transition period. The J-School hopes to contribute beyond this transition by feeding stories to Corner News Media via its award-winning NYCity News Service.

Not that there won’t be changes to come, reflecting the dynamic and diverse communities of Fort Greene and Clinton Hill. The Local and The Nabe already have borne witness to great change over the past four-plus years – most notably with the opening of the Barclays Center, the centerpiece of the evolving Atlantic Yards project.

But the site hasn’t focused only what some would call “big” news. Whether it was tips about lost pets, emails about local fires and crimes, or phone calls about the latest sports, music or arts event, locals took ownership of the news cycle by directing us to stories – and, in many cases, by creating posts themselves.

The venture, in its various incarnations, has never been about a newspaper, a journalism school or even a burgeoning hyperlocal news hub. The continuity has always been the community – and we fully expect that will remain the case as The Nabe takes on a new “Focus.”