Last night I moderated a panel discussion here in Seattle that looked at our area’s growing non-traditional local news scene, from neighborhood news sites to Newsvine to two new startups springing from the death of the print version of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. One of these startups, InvestigationsWest, plans to focus on investigative stories and then sell them to interested online publishers at an affordable cost. Another, SeattlePostGlobe, is partnering with the Seattle public TV and radio stations to take a donation-driven approach — they’re even exploring a model that would bundle donations across TV, radio and the web. (Both of these sites have not yet launched.) On the neighborhood news front, a startup called Instivate gave the audience a look into Neighborlogs, its turn-key platform product for people who want to start their own neighborhood news blogs. Neighborlogs includes self-serve advertising and classifieds products aimed at small businesses. The WestSeattleBlog was there — the first true 24/7 neighborhood news community in the country — giving us an update on their incredible growth, both in readership and advertising. Finally, the innovative community news site Newsvine, which was purchased by msnbc.com, explained the critical importance of embracing the community in open, meaningful ways.
It would be impossible for me to attempt to summarize last night’s two-hour discussion, but never fear, you can watch the streaming video here and read the real-time Twitter stream here. (By the way, that was the first time I moderated a panel with a live Twitter stream up on a big screen — people from the audience and those watching the live stream added a unique interactive element that helped mold the discussion in real-time.)
Updated: The Neighborlogs folks summarized the best Tweets here.