This Is How You Do Local Journalism

This is fantastic. I am floored. I cannot begin to express how much I love this. C-ville.com has produced a New York Times 'Snowfall' style local investigative piece covering a contentious local battle over a road project in central Virginia around Charlottesville. This got my attention because I frequently drive this route to go home and visit family and hate driving through this section of Charlottesville on 29 due to how much it slows me down (stoplights, congested traffic, etc). I had no idea that there was a 30 year old issue surrounding this section of road, a proposal to make a bypass around it and huge local political fight over it.

You HAVE to check this out.

The Road

Albemarle County's three-decade fight over the Western Bypass isn't over yet

Late on the night of Wednesday, June 8, 2011, a few prominent Albemarle County real estate developers and other vocal supporters of the long-stalled plan to build a Route 29 bypass around Charlottesville strolled into Lane Auditorium at the tail end of a marathon meeting of the Board of Supervisors…. I would love to credit whomever reported on this and developed the story from a code sense. C-ville just credits its writers so it looks as if their whole news division contributed. Shockingly well produced.

Update: I've now learned that while C-ville handled all the reporting, their code monkeys appear to be Vibethink. (Twitter)

Mr. President: What Twitter Users Asked vs What The Press Asks

Boston.com analyzed the Tweets sent by Twitter users from 2 p.m. on Monday and the transcripts from White House press briefings for the past few weeks and compared them. I think a lot of Twitter users do a better job than the press at asking questions. See the results.