Is Ann Arbor a glimpse into journalism's future?

As the 174-year newspaper, the Ann Arbor News, shut down, AnnArbor.com emerged. There was outrage, discouragement, curiosity, and a host of other feelings about the new social media/blogging/news web site. Well, whatever you felt about it -- good or bad -- AnnArbor.com may be what is in store for journalism.

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Yet I think that's the whole idea. Vielmetti himself isn't a journalist. His background is in technology, how people communicate over the web, and blogging. He's been blogging for 10 years, and on his own he started hosting a weekly lunch group for local Ann Arbor residents. In other words, he was doing "community building" before it was the buzzword among journalists.

Vielmetti says about half the community bloggers are active. They mainly write about the softer side of news: parenting, food and drinks, neighborhoods. So in a sense these community bloggers cover much of what typically made up features sections -- except you might get multiple voices instead of one, and all are local.

The bloggers get technological assistance and coaching on the blog style, which Vielmetti says isn't news or feature writing, but something unique. A copy editor reviews their posts after the fact and fixes typos or style and grammar errors. If one of the community bloggers writes something that really should be a news story, the post will be pulled until it can be substantiated, Vielmetti says. A reporter may be assigned to flesh out the idea -- so in that sense, the community bloggers become a herd of highly invested tipsters.

Read the entire article here.