Viat twitter:
@BlogHvlle & @HvilleEpicurean said: “Interesting and forward-thinking. Just hope they pick blogs with balanced views or that balance each other’s views.”

The Citizen-Times’ project is part of larger project, funded by the Knight Foundation and involving four other daily newspaper elsewhere in the country.

For more on the project as well as a lively disussion, see this topic in the mountainx.com Forums, entitled, “A network for Asheville’s newspapers, blogs and websites?”:
http://www.mountainx.com/forums/viewthread/2153/

Funny, I thought WNC LINC stood for “Looking for Income by Not paying Contributors.”

At least my version actually uses all the letters of the acronym.

Via Twitter, Monday, about 7:45am : @angienewsome wrote: “Asheville Citizen-Times starts regional networked journalism project. Me, @LYDIAC123 co-managing. We’re #wnclinc or http://blogs.citizen-times.com/blogs/index.php?blog=65 ”

First Cit-Times LINC post provides links to and info about the four other similar projects. Here’s part of the post: “The Seattle Times, whose project Editor and Publisher mentioned in a recent story about the effort. The newspaper has already identified and announced its local partners.”

She notes the other papers: Miami Herald; The Charlotte Observer, whose editor, Rick Thames, was quoted in a story by TheDailyTell.com; TusconCitizen.com, a Web-only citizen journalism outlet.

There’s also a 9/24 post from Angie Newsome with her initial thoughts on the project.

Read the two posts at:
http://blogs.citizen-times.com/blogs/index.php?blog=65

via twitter, 9/29/09:
@angienewsom and @LYDIAC123 are working to establish potential news/blog partners by mid-Oct,and have WNC LINC network up soon after #wnclinc http://blogs.citizen-times.com/blogs/index.php?blog=65

Text from LINC blogpost says:
“This week, we’re beginning to approach potential local partners about joining WNC LINC (WNC Local Information Cooperative). We want to hear their thoughts about collaborating with the Citizen-Times and other local bloggers and news producers. And we want to explore with them ideas for creating a strong and meaningful local news and information cooperative.

“Our goal is to have partnerships formed by mid-October and the information network up and running soon after that.”

There’s nothing “local” about the Citizen-Times anymore. It’s a shell of what it once was, and is run out of Knoxville (or is it Nashville -can’t remember)

The Citizen-Times published on Nov. 20 its Memo of Understanding with its “partners,” those local blogsite participating in the LINC project. To view the text of the memo and get the link to that LINC’s post, go to http://www.mountainx.com/news/2009/citizen-times_details_its_linc_collaboration_project_with_area_bloggers

AskAsheville announces a widget for the Citizen-Times LINC project, and notes a third partner, Artful Parent:

http://ashevillenorthcarolina.blogspot.com/2009/11/asheville-wnc-linc-local-information.html

LINC coordinator @Angienewsome just tweeted: “As of today, four of the five WNC LINC partners have been identified. We hope to announce within week or two. Working out bugs. #wnclinc”

There are five newspapers around the country participating in J-Lab’s hyperlocal-news project; one of them is the Asheville Citizen-Times.

Another is the Charlotte Observer.

Davidsonnews.net announced today that it is joining the Charlotte Observer’s collaborative project. A post from Davidsonnews.net says: “Today, we’re pleased to announce that we’ve joined a regional reporting experiment in partnership with The Charlotte Observer and four other local news websites around Charlotte”

http://davidsonnews.net/2009/12/30/davidsonnews-net-joins-regional-news-partnership/

According to that post, the five blogger partners are:

  * DavidsonNews.net, which has been reporting local news in Davidson since December 2006. More about us here.
  * Qcitymetro.com, founded by former Charlotte Observer deputy managing editor Glenn Burkins to provide news and information specific to Charlotte’s African American community.
  * The Scoop Network of sites – ballantynescoop.com, monroescoop.com, indiantrailscoop.com and westernunioncountyscoop.com – run by longtime Union County resident Steve Sherron and marketing expert Caroline Adams.
  * TegaCayTalk.com, started by Tega Cay, S.C., resident and graphic designer Ben Ullman to keep his neighbors abreast of civic developments.
  * The Villa Heights Voice, the newsletter of the Villa Heights Community Organization in east Charlotte. The Observer will help the group’s staff transition its newsletter to the Web and expand its reach.