"Our intention was to create a website that provided a place for Chicagoans to find worthwhile news, interesting online projects and cool events. At the time, the city’s mainstream media — and even the alternative media — had terrible websites. The Tribune’s site required you to log in, the Reader didn’t publish articles from the paper online, and let’s not even talk about the Sun-Times. Meanwhile, the existing events calendars, Metromix and the Reader’s listings, were a nearly unusable compendium of everything, often mixing drink specials and weekly DJ nights in with more noteworthy events.
Naz and Andrew invited around 15 local bloggers whose writing they liked and who we thought might share our love for Chicago and our enthusiasm for sharing it with the world and our neighbors. Happily, about a dozen agreed. Gapers Block launched on April 25, 2003, and garnered national attention from the blogosphere."
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Gapers Block is 10 Years Old - Gapers Block Chicago
(Happy birthday, Gapers Block!)
(via neighborhoodr-chicago)
"Every dollar spent at a locally owned business generates two-to-four times the economic development impacts as a dollar spent on an equivalent non-local business."
— Forbes piece on the amazing power of spending locally. (via poptech)
(via bbbrad)
"News became a little less of an industry and a little more of a living, breathing organism Thursday night. It’s not a new direction. For more than a decade now, ever since anyone with a thought and an Internet connection could so easily provoke his species, news has become less controlled. More vulnerable. More, well, human."
— Lesson from the manhunt: We’re all journalists now