Hyperlocal news site EveryBlock announced today it was shutting down for good. The closure marks an unexpected end to the site, which was once hailed for its innovation and ideas; the phrase "future of journalism" was once tossed around in reference to the site.
Adrian Holovaty has sold his hyperlocal news startup to MSNBC.com, allowing the programmer to cash out and keep his staff employed. For most entrepreneurs that would be unalloyed good news. But Holovaty isn't just any entrepreneur. Just ask his critics.
We would never imply that Adrian Holovaty, the supremely talented journalist-programmer who's now the CEO of local-news startup EveryBlock, is being cagey or dishonest about his talks with Google, which continued as recently as last weekend. Our theory: He's just shy and bashful, and doesn't like talking about what a…
Adrian Holovaty is going to save journalism, darn it, if the industry likes it or not. And he may soon be doing it at Google. The search engine has long suffered from a tin ear in its relations with writers and editors — the people who create the content it indexes. Holovaty gained fame for linking up Google Maps with…
Local journalism isn't a hot Web 2.0 field. Journalist Dan Gillmor learned that the hard way when he had to sell his unsuccessful citizen journalism site Bayosphere to a similar venture, Back Fence, which itself has barely grown past a few communities in Maryland and Virginia. Turns out people get their local news…
