Truly local community news sites are special things. Started by a mix of content entrepreneurs, hobbyists and community organizers, they are fragile. We're always sad when one of our Neighborlogs sites goes quiet -- alas, Ravenna Nation -- but we're equally happy when a new site joins the flock.

Please welcome one of the newest Neighborlogs sites -- the Beverly Hills Independent.

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Some community news sites are dedicated to helping to define under-defined, underrepresented areas. Beverly Hills wouldn't be one of those. But like one of our leading Neighborlogs sites, CapitolHillSeattle.com, there is still a story to tell about the daily lives of the people who live in these well-known places. In the process, these high profile locations can be redefined from a community perspective.

But we're getting ahead of ourselves. BHI is just getting started. Wish them luck and welcome them to the Neighborlogs family of community news sites. You can also follow their progress on Twitter @bhindependent.

Here's the latest from the Neighborlogs network of sites. Want to start your own neighborhood news site? Register for our beta.

• Curt over at Eastlake Ave. has been diligently following the new Seattle school's assignment plan, and this week, he updated readers on the ongoing process. 
• As yet another coffee shop opens in Capitol Hill, David Albright had a chance to sit down with the manager for a CapitolHillSeattle.com exclusive video interview.
• New Neighborlog SunValleyOnline gets readers ready for the snow and ski season with a weather update for the area.
• Belltownpeople take advantage of the diverse group of individuals roaming Pike Place, and pick out a very helpful fruit vendor.

Allow us to introduce one of the newest members of the Neighborlogs family of sites, the Buckingham Herald Trib from Arlington, VA.

Here's how site owner Steve Thurston describes his site's mission:

The Buckingham HeraldTrib is a news web site for the neighborhoods of Buckingham, Arlington Forest, Ashton Heights and surrounding Arlington.

Readers can submit their own work (especially calendar events!); they can post comments at the end of any story, or they can write emails to the editor: heraldtrib@gmail.com. All emails are considered letters to the editor, unless the writer explicitly writes that they are not.

I am interested in advertisers who are interested in reaching a local, Arlington, audience. Unlike the "Google Ads" model, I believe there is a market of people who get their news on-line, but prefer to shop, eat, and conduct business face-to-face. I am looking to Arlington advertisers who see the potential for that market, and want to reach a hyper-local audience, too.

Steve moved the Trib from Blogger...

(Via: Central District News)

• A Belltown local wins the prestigious Macarthur Genius Grant for filmography.
• Central District News highlights the popular local business review feature on Neighborlogs sites.
• Gay Cap Hill and Capitol Hill Seattle team up to bring readers the trailer for the 2009 Lesbian and Gay Film Festival.
• Another film festival over in San Diego, and its Neighborhood blog rolls out a comprehensive guide to the fun.
• The South Lake Union Blog recaps the ups and downs of SLU's criticized streetcar.

Here's the latest from the Neighborlogs network of sites. Want to start your own neighborhood news site? Register for our beta.

• Capitol Hill Seattle was packed with everything from guitar playing rabbits, schools dealing with swine flu, and a cougar scare this week.
• Up and coming Neighborlog Gay Cap Hill covers the Seattle Orcas, a swim team for gays, lesbians and friends.
• Belltownpeople.com reports on a weekend pet parade boasting live music, contests, and other festivities. 
• Eastlake Ave. discovers a 30 year tradition in the Eastlake Zoo cook off competition for best chili, not giraffe stew.

Here's the latest from the Neighborlogs network of sites. Want to start your own neighborhood news site? Register for our beta.

• ParkroseGateway gets readers ready for streets filled with school goers with bicycle and pedestrian safety posts.
• Central District's Garfield High School won its first football game of the year, and its neighborhood blog was there to capture it.
• San Diego Dtown goes a little bigger with their coverage of a Chargers player's tussle with the law.
• Capitol Hill Seattle moves off the hill to cover a back-to-school nightmare: H1N1 at the University of Washington.

(Photo: Lucas Anderson/Neighborlogs.com)

Here's the latest from the Neighborlogs network of sites. Want to start your own neighborhood news site? Register for our beta.

This week: Stories from across Seattle written by the Neighborlogs intern.

• From Capitol Hill Seattle, mayoral coverage on Mike McGinn's new vision for a 'Government 2.0'
• A band of permaculture lovers paraded through Ravenna on a garden bike parade. 
• Capturing a 17-year tradition in the Central District, our intern spent the evening documenting an annual summer block party.
• An in depth view on privately owned public spaces featured on the Belltown Neighborlog site.

(Photo: Centraldisctricnews.com)

• The bloggers in San Diego invite their readers to pull a "Ferris Bueller", and play hooky from work as summer comes to a close.
• Foster-Powell PDX starts an 11-part series on the best things about living in Foster-Powell.
• Our Capitol Hill Seattle blog shows no fear when faced with corporate competitors in the hyper-local biz.
• A dump truck runs into a local business in Central District, and CDNews had up to the minute coverage including video.

(Photo: Lucas Anderson/Neighborlogs.com)

• The bloggers at Foster Powell PDX review a local public garden that provides free lessons and information on natural, organic gardening. 
• Our Neighborlogs intern braved the record breaking Seattle heat for a photo tour featured on the Eastlake Ave site.
• A brand new Seattle based blog, Seattle League of Urban Gardeners, provides readers with a creative and easy way to plant around the neighborhood. 
• The editor of CDNews wrote a strong opinion piece that laid the ground for a great neighborhood discussion.  

(Source: Interbay District Blog)

Here's the latest from the Neighborlogs Network of sites. Want to start your own neighborhood news site? Register for our beta.

• An up and coming Neighborlogs blog in Central-Cocoanut Sarasota brings the neighborhood together for a summer-long scavenger hunt.
• A great new Seattle blog covering all things about the new light rail, Seattle By Rail, gives us the back story behind the new trains.
• Dough Schwartz over at Capitol Hill Seattle provides an extensive tour of the the rail from around the area. 
• A Seattle blog from the Interbay District features a guest writer with a great piece on the design of the neighborhood.

Bike recovered thanks to CDNews. (Photo: CentralDistrictnews.com)

Here's the latest from the Neighborlogs Network of sites. Want to start your own neighborhood news site? Register for our beta.

• The Eastlake Ave blog showcases many summer photos from the area.
• Seattle's summer time stimulus plan prompted our Belltown and Southlake sites to lay out all the great deals for their readers.
• A reader's bike was recovered thanks to the community over at Central District News.
• San Diego Dtown shows us some new ways to work out this summer.

Here's the latest from the Neighborlogs Network of sites. Want to start your own neighborhood news site? Register for our beta.

 

• Thirsty? TheSouthlake lets us in on a free Jones Soda deal from their South Lake Union headquarters.
• Sandiegodtown featured the "pitching guru" this week in a sports analysis from a man who knows it best.
• Streets blocked were blocked off and the SWAT team was called for what turned out to be theater students practicing for a play in Capitol Hill.
• Our North Seattle Blog, LakeCityLive, was quick on the scene for a surprising car crash.
• CentralDistrictNews discovers chickens in neighborhood backyards.

A cool story from the first Neighborlogs site ever shows what can happen when great news and information providers connect with their community. The Central District News recently ran a post from a resident whose bike had been stolen.

Here's what happened next:

Officer Jonathan Chin and his partner were on routine patrol Monday when they saw a man riding a bike without a helmet. They made a traffic stop for the helmet violation, and on closer inspection Officer Chin realized he recognized the bike. He had visited CDNews earlier that day and had seen soundviewrob's post about the bike, and made the connection.

Neighborhood news can't guarantee every stolen bike is going to be returned. But as a force to connect the people who live and work in your community, it does accomplish some pretty amazing things.

From lakecitylive.net

Here's the latest from the Neighborlogs Network of sites. Want to start your own neighborhood news site? Register for our beta.

• Andrew Taylor from Capitol Hill Seattle keeps us up to date on the resurrection of Miller Playfield.  
• The folks over at Eastlake Ave have graciously provided a list of businesses staying open on the fourth in case you run out of hot dog buns.
• A great line up of pizza and popcorn from sandiegodtown.com.
• Meet the man behind the words from one of our Seattle blogs, Belltownpeople.
• Lake City’s fireworks come under attack…even Stephen Colbert is upset.

We'll take a quick spin around the Neighborlogs Network from time to time to see what's happening on sites using our service. Here's the latest:

• Seattle's Ravenna Nation runs down the roster of breakfast joints in the area. I approve of all Greek diners so Costas goes on the list of places to try.
• Just north of Ravenna, Lake City Live documents some news you can use about parking at the local strip club.
• Out Knoxville way, the Argus is reborn.
• Portland's Foster-Powell PDX is already sporting a green thumb in anticipation of spring garden photos.
• From Seattle's South Lake Union neighborhood, TheSouthLakedeploys Neighborlogs' mobile posting feature to cover the SLU art walk.
• Meanwhile, Seattle's Interbay neighborhood has a new, really tall group of neighbors.

A neighborhood blogger's business is built on top of unique local content and attention. That's the basic equation. Place-based aggregators, then, are double-edged swords. They bring a 'hood blog distribution and attention but they can and do damage the perceived uniqueness of the content. There are few things more frustrating on this planet for a placeblogger than finding Outside.in's version of your post ranking higher in search results than the actual post. Just writing that out makes me get hot under the collar.

To date, Outside.in has been the only big player focusing on "place" in the aggregator space. But starting in August, Seattle also got its first exposure to EveryBlock. The services can be described similarly but have quite a different take on things. Outside.in is focused almost exclusively on created content whereas EveryBlock gives equal emphasis to semi-automated sources like the latest restaurant inspection reports or land use filings. Because of this, EveryBlock is much more...

We have two obsessions here at Neighborlogs HQ:

1) Local content

2) Web analytics

Not much more fun, then, than local content Web analytics. We'll post some of the more interesting analytic finds we make on the Neighborlogs network sites on this blog from time to time. Let's get started with two timeless, time-based classics.

First, a day of week analysis. What day of the week do the Neighborlogs neighborhood blogs attract the most visits? What's the relative activity on a weekend day vs. a weekday?

Here's a chart showing visits by day of week for the network.

For Neighborlogs site activities over the past three months, you can see a pretty typical content pattern. Tuesdays and Wednesdays are in a virtual dead heat for the top slot. On Mondays, everybody is a little more busy, apparently, and there is a rampdown as folks downshift toward the weekend. You can also assume the sites contribute to and accelerate these trends by publishing in a similar pattern. We'll look at that dataset in another post.

The next time-based...