Brooklyn Independent Media

From left to right, Corner Media's Liena Zagare, the Original Media Group's Zawadi Morris, City Limits' Jarrett Murphy and (back turned) BIM's Megan Donis and Sriyanka Ray on the set of Straight Up! at The Emerson Bar in Clinton Hill.

Remember the days when it seemed like everyone was going to start a blog, and every blogger was going to consider himself a journalist? If that was ever actually a possibility, it certainly isn’t reality now. At least not in Brooklyn.

The reason, as Corner Media’s Liena Zagare points out in the latest edition of Straight Up!, is that “blogging” is not a type of journalism, or even a style or reportage. A blog is just a tool for presenting stories digitally. The content is what matters.

And for sites like the ones Corner Media operates, or for Zawadi Morris’ BKReader, the content that has driven success has been old-fashioned local coverage and shoe-leather reporting. The “blogs” that have survived and built an audience typically do what local newspapers did 30 years ago. They might be more accessible, less formal, more active, more aggregative (if that’s a word) and different from ye olde hometowne newspaper in a number of ways, but it’s still real news that drives the train.

Hear Zagare and Morris talk about life in the trenches of hyperlocal news in Brooklyn in the clip below and in the full episode here.