Vivienne Gucwa

If you see the phrase “East Village” after a byline at The Local, it means that the article is the work of one of our community contributors. These are people who live or work in the neighborhood, or have strong ties to it, and are willing to report on local news, talk about their interests and passions, or just inform and entertain us about aspects of East Village life. The Local is always looking for writers to join the party. Most of the articles we publish are around 500 to 600 words, but we are also on the lookout for brief, focused telegrams from the street.

You don’t need to be a professional journalist. We’ll provide help in getting your copy into shape if you need it. Interested? For more details, email Kim Davis, The Local’s associate editor (kimdavis@thelocaleastvillage.com). Add your voice to the choir.

The Local is proud to announce the members of the 2011 New York Times/NYU Hyperlocal Digital Reporting Internship class. The interns were chosen after a national competition and have been selected to participate in The Local’s paid, 10-week summer internship program.

“These are among the most talented and promising student-journalists in the country,” said Richard G. Jones, editor of The Local. “They have demonstrated a commitment to digital storytelling and hyperlocal news. We very much look forward to working with them this summer.”

The members of the intern class are:

Khristopher J. Brooks.

Khristopher J. Brooks is a student in the Literary Reportage master’s degree concentration at the NYU Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute. Mr. Brooks, who came to NYU after working as a reporter at the Bristol Herald Courier and the Omaha World-Herald, is a graduate of Central Michigan University. He has held internships at the Associated Press bureau in Louisville, Ky. and the Lansing State Journal. He has also filed on-air reports for WJHL-TV in Johnson City, Tenn.

Joshua Davis.

Joshua Davis is the Roy H. Park master’s fellow in the School of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. A veteran videographer and editor, Mr. Davis began his coursework at UNC after holding a range of production positions at the Travel Channel, PBS Frontline and Rollingstone.com. A graduate of the University of Maryland, Mr. Davis has taught digital video editing at Rutgers, NYU and UNC. He is also an Apple certified instructor for Final Cut Pro.

Ian Duncan.

Ian Duncan is a student in the master’s degree program in Journalism and International Relations in Global and Joint Program Studies at NYU Journalism. An international student from England, Mr. Duncan is a graduate of St. Anne’s College at Oxford University, where he served as editor-in-chief of Cherwell, a weekly student newspaper. Mr. Duncan, who has also studied at Fukuoka University of Economics in Japan, was a Rupert Murdoch Scholar during an internship at The Times of London and he has also held an internship at The Birmingham Post. Mr. Duncan’s work has appeared on The Local.

Meghan Keneally.

Meghan Keneally is a student in the master’s degree program at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism. Ms. Keneally has held internships at The New York Observer, The Washington Post and The Sunday Times of London. A graduate of Georgetown University, she has studied at the University of Marc Bloch in Strasbourg, France and is also the creator of a restaurant review blog.

Laura E. Lee.

Laura E. Lee is a student in the master’s degree program at the Philip Merrill College of Journalism at the University of Maryland College Park. Ms. Lee went to Maryland after earning a law degree at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and working as an attorney and consultant. Ms. Lee, who also earned her undergraduate degree at UNC, currently works as a political reporter for the Capital News Service in Washington, D.C. She also reports for Patch.com, The Washington Blade and the Prince George’s Sentinel and has held an internship with National Public Radio. Ms. Lee is a member of the bar in North Carolina and the District of Columbia.

Chelsia Rose Marcius.

Chelsia Rose Marcius is a student in the Reporting the Nation master’s degree concentration at NYU Journalism. She has held reporting internships at the Chicago Sun-Times and Fox Chicago News and is the editor of Pavement Pieces, an online publication featuring work by Reporting New York and Reporting the Nation students. A graduate of Loyola University-Chicago, Ms. Marcius holds bachelor’s degrees in both journalism and international studies and minored in Italian. Ms. Marcius, who has also studied at The John Felice Rome Center in Italy, is a member of Phi Beta Kappa. Her work has appeared on The Local.

Kim Davis.

We at The Local are happy to announce the return of a face that is familiar to many of our community contributors: Kim Davis, the site’s founding community editor, will today begin a six-month rotation as associate editor of The Local. In that role, he will use his deft editing touch to oversee the day-to-day coordination of The Local’s roster of community contributors.

Colin Moynihan.

Although I was born in Manhattan my first trips to the East Village came as a teenager in the 1980’s when I traveled to the Bowery – CBGB! – and to St. Marks Place, where I spent hours in used record stores and book stores.

Later, in the early half of the 1990’s, I moved to Suffolk Street, a few blocks below what is generally considered the southern end of the East Village, although I always tended to consider the territory above East Houston Street to be the northern zone of the Lower East Side. (There will be more, in future posts, on the nature of geography and labeling of neighborhoods.)  I have lived just south of Houston since then, but my travels and my interests have always extended beyond that borderline.

In the late 1990’s I began writing newspaper stories about the area and it was then that I began to see events not so much in terms of what they meant to me but in terms of how they affected others and how they fit into a historical or cultural context.  Some of my first stories were about local landmarks, squats, the struggles surrounding the future of the Charas / El Bohio community center, the community gardens – during both celebratory moments and times of tension – and the nearly ceaseless battles over real estate and development that have shaped so much of the recent history of the East Village and continue to do so today.  (More, also, in future posts, on that.)

Over the last eight years, I have reported and written more and more about the world beyond the East Village.  But I have never stopped roaming the neighborhood, talking with people and paying attention to what is going on there.

I have also continued to write about the East Village: The departure of a market, a cafe, or a large, eccentric piece of public art; the possibility of privatizing public space; the troubles faced by a mainstay of the local landscape; the tradition of protest and debate; the death of a neighbor and existence as it is experienced on a certain stretch of Avenue A.  To me these are not just interesting stories.  They are narratives of vital concern to the people who cherish the neighborhood’s streets and parks and buildings and sense a connection to the other lives that are lived here. I know that I am not the only one who feels that kinship.

I’m fortunate to be able to start off in this job with the benefit of a solid base established by my predecessor, Kim Davis and the site’s chief editor, Richard G. Jones. (Kim and Rich, thank you.)  And I’m hoping to help continue making The Local a site where people go to read about –– and to write about –– the events and occurrences that make life in the East Village something worth caring about.

To all contributors: I look forward to working with you.  And to all members of the community: consider this an invitation to become a contributor.

Colin Moynihan is the community editor of The Local East Village. If you are interested in becoming a contributor to the site, please email him.

Kim Davis.

My last day as Community Editor of The Local East Village finds me looking back on what has been a long and eventful journey. For me, the journey didn’t begin with a phone call from Rich Jones, or even with the friendly interrogation to which I was subjected by Jay Rosen and his Studio 20 journalism class.

The journey, for me, began more years ago than I would like to think, still living in London and devouring everything I could read about downtown New York. The history, the legends, the tales of the artists and poets. Books by Joseph Mitchell and Ronald Sukenick, photographs by Fred McDarrah. I even subscribed to “The New Yorker” – not uncommon, I know, but I used to check “Goings on About Town” and plan what I might do with my evening if only I wasn’t 3,000 miles away. Danny’s Skylight Room at the Grand Sea Palace sounded like the most exotic joint on earth.

Almost 15 years ago, I saw my chance and seized it, moving first to Midtown with a temporary job, before settling in the East Village and beginning the process leading to residency and something like permanence. My daughter was born in New York, has grown up in the East Village, and will have the memory of it always. Call me a romantic, but one day she will realize what a wonderful gift that is.

Although I’ve been a writer of one kind or another as long as I can remember, I could hardly have imagined when I set out on this trip that I would have the opportunity to help edit and even modestly shape a site like this. That will be a great memory for me going forward: like celebrating my green card by going out and buying a Yankees jersey (number 42), this has been another ritual of arrival in the pre-eminent city of arrivals. Thanks to The Local, to Rich and the rest of the team, for giving me this home. And you haven’t heard the last from me.

All the best, of course, to Colin Moynihan in taking this all to the next level.

Kim Davis is the founding community editor of The Local East Village. He blogs at www.pinkpignyc.com.

Colin Moynihan.

We at The Local are happy to announce that Colin Moynihan, a reporter who during a period of 12 years has written about the East Village for The Times, is joining the blog as its next community editor.

Mr. Moynihan, who has also written for The New Yorker, New York magazine, and The
Village Voice, succeeds Kim Davis, who recently completed a six-month rotation as the site’s founding community editor.

“I’m looking forward to joining in the intrepid journalistic experiment that The Local began five months ago,” said Mr. Moynihan. “The East Village has a rich history and a legacy of great reporting and writing. It will be exciting to be part of a project that will try to contribute to that legacy while helping to write the next chapter in the neighborhood’s history.”

Richard G. Jones, the editor of The Local, praised the depth and breadth of Mr. Moynihan’s journalistic experience.

“We are extremely fortunate to have an editor of Colin’s caliber who brings an understanding of The Times’ standards and values, an innate knowledge and appreciation of the East Village’s distinct culture, and absolutely impeccable reporting chops,” Mr. Jones said.

The Local is pleased to announce that Colin Moynihan, a reporter who has written about the East Village for The Times over a period of 12 years, will join the blog as its next community editor. Mr. Moynihan succeeds Kim Davis, who recently completed a six-month rotation in the position. We will have more details and a fuller post tomorrow. —The Local

The Local East Village invites you to a Saturday morning group event featuring the use of SeeClickFix to log neighborhood concerns.

On Tuesday, we announced a new collaboration between The Local East Village and SeeClickFix, an organization that offers a variety of platforms to report local non-emergency concerns, such as potholes and broken street lights.

SeeClickFix relies on citizen reporting, and to kick things off, we plan to hold a walk through the East Village to log concerns.

We will meet Saturday morning at 9:30 outside 20 Cooper Square and spend an hour walking the East Village area to report issues.

If you are interested in joining this event, please e-mail me on seeclickfixlev@gmail.com. If you have a smartphone, please download a free SeeClickFix app and bring it with you to log concerns.

We look forward to seeing you there, and please remember that you can log issues at any time on the map page on this site.

You can also post to SeeClickFix while on the go using mobile devices and you can follow posts within the East Village area via @SeeClickFixLEV on Twitter.

The Local East Village announces a new collaboration with SeeClickFix.

Today we have launched a new feature on The Local East Village – a collaboration with SeeClickFix, an organization that offers a variety of platforms to report local non-emergency concerns, such as potholes,
graffiti and broken street lamps.

Using SeeClickFix, we hope to raise awareness about different issues in the East Village. This collated information is directly available and can be viewed from the East Village watch area on this blog.

You can also use the page to post your concerns about the neighborhood.

Anyone, including local government officials, neighborhood groups and private individuals, can sign up to receive notifications about posted concerns.

As journalists, we also hope to use the information to help us report more effectively on community concerns and draw attention to them.

We would like to invite you to take a look at SeeClickFix on The Local East Village and encourage you to report neighborhood issues.

You can do this from the main map page on The Local East Village. The information you enter there will appear both as a report on the map and on the main SeeClickFix site.

If you have any problems posting or tracking issues, please visit the SeeClickFix help section.

You can also post to SeeClickFix while on the go using mobile devices and you can follow posts within the East Village area via @SeeClickFixLEV on Twitter.

We look forward to hearing what you think most needs fixing in the East Village.

The students of “The Hyperlocal Newsroom.” Seated (from left): Stephanie Butnick, Sarah Tung, Elisa Lagos, Molly O’Toole, Clint Rainey, Meredith Hoffman, Rachel Morgan. Standing (from left): Tania Barnes, Maya Millett, Helen Zhang, Simon McCormack, Laura Kuhn, Jenn Pelly, Spencer Magloff, Suzanne Rozdeba, Robyn Baitcher, Sally Lauckner, Timothy J. Stenovec, Claire Glass, Sophie Hoeller, Carolyn Stanley, Alexa Tsoulis-Reay, Darla Murray, Andre Tartar, Amanda VanAllen.

Good morning, East Village.

When The Local launched in September, we issued an open invitation to our neighbors to join us in this experiment in journalistic collaboration.

Today, we would like to express our gratitude to all of those who have traveled with us on the journey so far, sharing their ideas, energy and talent with the site to help cover the community that we all call home.

Our appreciation extends far and wide – to the students of “The Hyperlocal Newsroom,” an elective course at NYU Journalism through which students report for the site, to our able authors from across the community, to local photographers who have generously shared the vivid images that they have captured reflecting the richness and variety of neighborhood life.

To them all, we extend our thanks and our wish that the list that follows – and the spirit of cooperation that this site represents – will continue to grow in the weeks and months to come.
Read more…

Kim Davis.

The Community Editorship at The Local East Village was conceived as a rotating position, which means that the end of my term is in sight. Beginning early in the New Year, the next Community Editor will bring his or her own special angle and experience to the task of building a bridge between the Web site’s operations at NYU and the East Village community itself, a project which I’ve tried to put on a firm footing but which is by no means complete.

The Community Editor, as an East Village resident, provides advice and guidance on covering the neighborhood and is to some extent the face of the Web site in the community. Hands-on editorial work is an important part of the job – receiving pitches from community contributors, assigning writers and photographers, editing copy, gently enforcing deadlines and – yes – picking up mistakes. In effect, the Community Editor functions as an additional line editor and serves as an advocate for the blog’s readers, working closely with the site’s editor, Richard G. Jones.

Reporting is part of the profile, too. As an independent contractor, the Community Editor is responsible for providing objective coverage of NYU’s activities to the extent they impinge on the East Village, as well as for developing and writing stories reflecting his or her own interests.

The Community Editor should live within the blog’s coverage area – from 14th Street to Houston, Broadway to the East River – and needs to know the neighborhood and care about it. The editor will be responsible for compiling an aggregation of blogposts each morning and a willingness to run on breaking news stories when needed is a definite plus. The editor should have experience as a writer or editor, be happy to work with a very diverse group of contributors, and be able to make his or her voice heard above the hubbub of producing a daily blog. A working knowledge of WordPress is essential and it also helps to have flexible working hours.

The Local will be accepting applications for the position until Dec. 3. If you’re interested, please submit a resume and cover letter to Mr. Jones.

Kim Davis is the community editor of The Local East Village.

Seven students at NYU Journalism direct The Local’s social media effort, including our Twitter account.

Here at The Local, we’d like to introduce you to the members of our team who are helping to promote digital innovation on the site through social media.

They are a group of students in the Studio 20 graduate concentration at NYU Journalism and for the past several weeks they have assumed the task of interacting with readers and extending the reach of our reporting through a range of social media, including The Local’s Twitter and Facebook accounts.

The students are:

• Blair Hickman @amandablair on Twitter; Ms. Hickman also manages The Local’s Facebook page.
• Nasry Esmat @nasry; Mr. Esmat handles photo submissions.
• Chao Li @cli6cli6, who Tweets for The Local (@nytlev) on Mondays.
• Dave Holmes @david_m_holmes, who Tweets on Tuesdays.
• Colin Jones @colin_jones, who Tweets on Wednesdays.
• Chelsea Stark @chelseabot; Ms. Stark is The Local’s Social Media Editor and she Tweets on Thursdays.
• Todd Olmstead @toddjolmstead, who Tweets on Fridays.

One way that the team has already added value to the blogosphere is through their creation of a series of East Village-related Twitter lists (including a list of neighborhood bars and restaurants).

We hope that you will submit your own ideas for the lists, and send along breaking news tips, interesting photos, and just about anything else that crosses your mind that you can sum up in 140 characters.

The Local’s QR code.

Many New Yorkers have started to notice the odd square bar codes that are popping up on signs and advertisements around the city. These are called ‘QR codes’ which stands for Quick Response. QR codes provide a link between the physical world and the virtual world of the Internet. When you use your smartphone to scan a QR code you are often taken to a website with more information on a product or special offers. So while you use your mouse to click links on the computer you can now use your phone to ‘click’ QR links you find on the street. QR codes have been popular for years in Japan but are just now catching on in the United States.

We here at The Local East Village wanted to know how many people in our community were using QR codes. To find out, over the next several days we will be distributing Local East Village flyers – on brightly colored paper – to local businesses. When the code is scanned, your smart phone visits a site that we run so we can keep a tally of visitors and then is directed to The Local East Village. We are distributing four different versions of our flyer so that we can see how many people are using QR codes in different areas. We’ll publish our findings in a few weeks and share our data with you. If you see one of our flyers be sure to scan it so you can take part.

Have a smart phone but don’t know how to read QR codes? Simply go to your favorite app store and look for ‘qr reader’ – you’re sure to find a number of free programs to use.

Portrait of An Artist from The Local East Village on Vimeo.

Last week, we told you about our video storytellers at The Local and the space that is reserved for weekly features on the right side of the page.

Over the past month, NYU Journalism’s Bolanle Omisore has explored the world of extreme tattooing, Sarah Tung has described the world of Japanese culture that exists in the East Village and Damon Beres took viewers inside the world of Toy Tokyo.

Other pieces have included Timothy J. Stenovec’s look at a commuter mosque and Maya Millett’s profile of the Social Tees Animal Rescue. In this week’s feature, which also plays above, NYU Journalism’s Steven McCann interviews the artist Andrew Castrucci.

You can find these videos and others at The Local East Village’s Vimeo page.

And if you’re interested in submitting your visual stories to The Local, please contact Kim Davis, The Local’s community editor.

We wanted to bring your attention to work of our visual storytellers here at The Local.

Along the right side of this page, you’ll find a box that plays videos produced by our community contributors and the students at NYU Journalism.

Each Friday, a new video will begin a week-long run in the space.

This week’s selection (which also plays above), by NYU Journalism’s Maya Millett, tells the story of an institution that is familiar to animal lovers around the neighborhood – the Social Tees Animal Rescue.

Sarah Tung

We wanted to bring your attention to four features here on the site that we think can help you learn more about what’s happening in our community.

To find the first, just look up. There, on the blue bar at the top of the page, is a new heading “News River.” It opens directly onto an aggregator of links from the East Village blogosphere that was developed by Dave Winer, a visiting scholar at NYU Journalism.

We briefly mentioned a second addition earlier this week: a series of links that provide comprehensive real estate data about the East Village. You can find them if you scroll down the column along the right side of this page or by following these links.

• Market Snapshot Data
• Building Permits Data
• Sales Activity Data
• Building Directory Index

And directly below the real estate links in the right column is a special pull-down menu that provides test score information about public elementary and high schools that serve the East Village.

Below the schools data is the final feature that we’d like to bring to your attention: our pull-down menu of East Village restaurants drawn from data at The Times.

These are just a few more of the collaborative ways that we’re bringing value to the blogosphere through the talents of Mr. Winer and our colleagues at The Times.

Kim Davis.

We’d like to introduce you to Kim Davis, the Community Editor of The Local East Village, and encourage you to contact him if you are interested in contributing to the blog.

Here at The Local we consider our neighbors in the East Village our partners in the journalistic collaboration that is at the heart of this site.

And Mr. Davis, a blogger and a resident of the East Village for nearly a decade, plays a crucial role in that partnership.

If you have a story idea, would like to submit photos or would like to contribute to the site in any other way please email Mr. Davis.

You can also follow him on Twitter @LEVkimdavis.

And we’d also like to remind you that you’re all invited to a celebration of the history of the East Village at NYU Journalism Thursday night where Pete Hamill will discuss ways that storytellers can bring tales from the neighborhood’s past into the present.

The celebration begins at 6 p.m. at 20 Cooper Square, 7th Floor with music, food and drink.

We look forward to seeing you there.

Matt Panuska

Broadway to the East River, 14th Street to Houston.

That’s how we define the boundaries of the East Village and the coverage area of this blog.

Do you think we’re on the mark or way off? What boundaries would you use to define the East Village?

If The Local East Village, a collaboration between The New York Times and New York University’s Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute, is an experiment in online journalism, then one of its most ambitious applications, the Virtual Assignment Desk, is an experiment within an experiment.

Designed as a digital interactive platform that provides readers with a way to suggest stories or volunteer to produce them, the Assignment Desk is an effort to help readers shape The Local’s coverage of news in the East Village.

“The Local East Village is about experimenting with innovative means of producing quality journalism in and about our own community,” said Brooke Kroeger, director of the Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute. “Making it easy for community members to participate in this project is just as high a value. One of our major purposes in taking on this project is to have an in-house professional-level laboratory for journalistic innovation.” Read more…