Local news is crucial to communities, but many newspapers, including the Boston Globe, now limit their coverage of small town issues and events. Citizen journalists can offer a powerful antidote by providing interesting and accurate local stories and information.

Since July, 2012 The Bedford Citizen (TBC), a blog devoted to news about Bedford, Massachusetts, has shared more than 1,700 articles with more than 1,000 subscribers, 750 Facebook friends, and nearly 300 Twitter followers. TBC uses Vigilance by Theme Foundry on a self-hosted site.

Questions to raise:
Why create a local news site?
Crowd sourcing: Surfacing and motivating reporters?
Free, or behind a pay wall?

From the ease and free access of WordPress.com to more complex but still easy to manage self-hosted themes, WordPress offers an optimal platform for sharing local news