Phillip Kalantzis CopeAs my last day as editor of The Local draws to a close, I wanted to take a moment to thank all of you who have joined our experiment in collaborative journalism over the past year.
Since our launch in September, many of our neighbors have accepted our invitation to tell their own stories about the community that we all share and the blog has served as a showcase for the richness of voices and images and perspectives that makes the East Village what it is. Even more of you have visited the blog or paused to leave a comment in our forums or speak with us via Facebook and Twitter. We are grateful to you all.
The hard work that we have put into the site speaks for itself — and by “we” I mean community contributors, NYU students, and everyone else who has generously shared their talents in this effort.
And happily that work will continue under the exceptional leadership of Daniel Maurer, who on Monday will formally assume the editorship of the blog with all of my best wishes.
To my neighbors and friends here in the East Village, to the extraordinary students whom I’ve had the pleasure of teaching, to my wonderful colleagues at NYU and The New York Times, again, thank you all.
Daniel Maurer.The Local is pleased to announce that Daniel Maurer, co-founder of the New York magazine restaurant blog Grub Street, has been named the blog’s next editor, effective in August.
“Daniel emerged from a field of well over a hundred highly qualified candidates,” said Brooke Kroeger, the Institute director. “He impressed us with his ideas, his digital sophistication, his passion for this neighborhood, so often featured on Grub Street, and his proven know-how in mining information at the local community level.”
Mr. Maurer was an online producer and editor of nightlife listings at New York magazine before co-founding Grub Street, one of New York’s pioneering restaurant blogs, in 2006. While writing more than 7,500 posts over five years, Mr. Maurer grew the blog’s traffic steadily and helped expand it to five other cities. Grub Street New York was nominated for three James Beard Foundation Journalism Awards — it won in 2008 (for Multimedia Writing on Food) and then again in 2011 (for Group Blog) when Mr. Maurer was chief editor. It has also been nominated for a National Magazine Award and won a MIN Best of the Web award in 2007.
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Shawn HokeThis blog began with an invitation. From our very first post, The Local has sought to bring our neighbors in the East Village into the process of producing news and telling their own stories about their community.
Recently, The Local quietly marked six months of publication and while the wonderful experiment that it represents will continue, my time running the site is coming to an end. In August, after what will have been 20 months of planning, developing and publishing The Local, I will step down to pursue other ventures and to devote more time to completing my doctoral dissertation.
Today, NYU is opening the search for the next editor of The Local. Whoever gets the job will be stepping into a position that is exciting, challenging and rewarding and one that is very much helping to drive the industry-wide conversation about digital storytelling, hyperlocal news and the future of pro-am journalism partnerships.
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