Windy Citizen lets you share and discover the best local news, events, photos and videos and read original reporting on Chicago people, places and issues.
How it works
1. Post a Chicago link. (No sign up required!)
2. Watch as people vote up, click on, and discuss it and our network writes about it.
3. The best links make the front page and are delivered via daily e-mail, rss, twitter and more.
"What's interesting in Chicago today?"
The Chicagoland area is covered by 4 daily newspapers, 4 weeklies, 50 community papers, 17 Chicago-focused magazines, a dozen radio stations, and 9 television stations according to Wikipedia. There are also dozens of blogs as well as local guides like Yelp, Craigslist, Everyblock and Metromix that are pumping out new listings, reviews and datapoints 24/7. Plus Chicago videos on Youtube. Oh, and photos on Flickr, and...
Do you have time to sift through all this stuff and pluck out the highlights?
The Windy Citizen solves this problem through collective intelligence, by creating a central place where people can share, discuss and vote up links to local content they find interesting. We're a social interesting-ness filter for Chicago content, a people-powered front page for anything local or pertaining to life in Chicago that gives you an at-a-glance look at what's hot in the city right now. There are no editors. You choose what's news. The front page consists of submissions that float to the top of the pile as voted on by the community.
The Windy Citizen is a place where people discover, share and discuss Chicago content found on the web.
How does it work? Every item on the front page is submitted by
members of our community, people like you. Once an item is on the
site, other users can check it out and vote for it if they find it
interesting. If enough people vote for an item, it makes the front
page where it will be seen by many more.
Taking a collective intelligence approach to local newsgathering is a way to expand the local conversation beyond mainstream headlines. However, the Windy Citizen also brings depth. Top submissions are examined and explored by local experts and die-hard Chicago afficionados across our blog network and each week we'll interview a key figure from a popular submission or cover an event that made the front page and let you suggestion the questions.
There's more, of course. For starters:
If you want to join our effort to crowdsource the most interesting links in Chicago or be a part of the effort to investigate and probe into them, sign up now.
Get the latest site updates on our blog at blog.windycitizen.com
Brad Flora - Publisher, developer and lead writer. Brad is a Chicago-based journalist with credits at the Chicago Defender, NWITimes.com and Slate.com. He manages the site. Each week, based on the top submissions, he'll interview someone tied to a story or cover a particularly popular event. You can e-mail him at windycitizen @ gmail.com, friend him on the Citizen at http://www.windycitizen.com/user/brad-flora, or follow him on twitter at twitter.com/bflora.
Kayla Webley - Editor-in-Chief, blogs and reporting. She is currently a graduate student at
Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism and has interned
at The Portland Oregonian, The Seattle Times, The Scripps Howard News
Wire and National Public Radio. Kayla is a 2008 Carnegie-Knight Journalism Fellow, and can be reached here. Kayla recruits for and oversees our blogs and special reporting projects.
Our bloggers are also a big part of the team, coming to us from many disciplines and from all over Chicago. You can browse their ranks over here. And submit an idea for a new blog on the network over here.
The Citizen is funded by helping Chicago businesses and organizations reach local newshounds, tastemakers and mavens via online advertising. If you're interested in advertising on the Citizen, contact us.
Feedback, press and general contact
Did something break? Want to learn more about us? Got a question? Ping us. Send messages to windycitizen at gmail.com
Bloggers, Publishers and Content Partners
Want to incorporate the Citizen into your site? Browse our tools and contact us at windycitizen at gmail.com with questions.
This site Copyright 2008, Windy Citizen.com - All rights reserved. Content posted by users is dedicated to the public domain. Powered by Drupal 5.7. Hosted by Midphase.
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