WAN-IFRA: What is EveryBlock and what key figures explain its success?

Adrian HOLOVATY: EveryBlock lets you follow neighborhood news and connect with your neighbors in 16 American cities.

Our goal is to help you make your block a better place, by giving you frequently updated neighborhood news, plus tools to have meaningful conversations with neighbors.The site is simple to use: create an account and choose which places you'd like to follow -- say, your home and your workplace.Your custom EveryBlock homepage, updated throughout the day, will show you what's been happening near your followed places, plus what people in those places are talking about.
The site, run by a team of six, was originally funded by a grant from the Knight Foundation and is now wholly owned by msnbc.com.

EveryBlock was one of the earliest "hyperlocal" sites, and, to this day, no other news site matches its level of geographic sophistication and its approach to neighborhood conversations.

WAN-IFRA: Since the launch of Everyblock what are the key lessons you have learnt about the role of journalists?

AH: The biggest lesson I've learned is to ask yourself the question: "To what end?" For a long time I thought the most important point of journalism was to make people more informed.

But "being more informed" is not an end in itself; normal people do not wake up in the morning and say, "You know what I feel like doing? I feel like being more informed today." I've realized that it's critical to think hard about the specific problems people are having -- how can we solve a specific problem or need, rather than provide information only for the sake of making people more informed.

WAN-IFRA: How would you define innovation in the field of journalism?

AH: Very slow. :-)

WAN-IFRA: What local or hyperlocal initiatives have attracted your attention recently and why?

AH: I love Front Porch Forum (www.frontporchforum.com), which is  based in Vermont. The most impressive thing about it to me is that they've reached an incredibly high penetration in certain neighborhoods -- 90% of people in one neighborhood use it, for example.

Join Adrian in Paris for the 6th Summer University on 27 & 28 June next...
www.wan-ifra.org/summeruniversity2011

Interview by David SALLINEN, Training Manager WAN-IFRA, France.