Henry Aubin does an interesting comparison here between The Monitor – which ceased being a paper publication recently after a respectable 80-year run – and Transcontinental's new paper newspaper for the area, Le Citoyen. He finds that the new "newspaper" comes across as basically a PR fluff effort and says "either nothing is replacing the community press as it wanes or that, as in this case, pseudo-journalism is replacing it." Fagstein pointed out to me the online Monitor's own excoriation of the new paper, calling it a "propaganda pamphlet."

(Incidentally, what the hell is wrong with Transcontinental's community paper websites? The text is always illegible, too small and with some weird letterspacing going on.)

Can blogs possibly fill the gap of being informed and informative about local affairs and intelligently critical when it's called for? Even at the borough level? I'd like to see evidence that people are not only willing to make this effort, but willing to do it weekly, regularly, over the long haul. Local journalism is not glamorous, but it's the real challenge now that world news can be called up with the flick of a finger in several media. posted at 19:27