Finally, Brooklyn Gets its Own News Bureau

Here's yet another reason not to have to travel to "that island" west of the East River: Brooklyn soon will be getting its own news bureau.

City Limits, a non-profit, independent investigative journalism organization that publishes in-depth reporting about civic affairs in New York City, announced it will be launching Brooklyn Bureau, an online news site dedicated to covering all things Brooklyn.

"Journalism is critical for New Yorkers to understand the complexities of the issues we face,” said Mark Anthony Thomas, director of City Limits. “With the Brooklyn Bureau, we will employ the tools of investigative journalism to produce the kind of deeply reported, public-minded news on the borough’s underserved communities the mainstream just does not provide.”

The new site will launch this fall, with funding support from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation and the Brooklyn Community Foundation.

City Limits produces an award-winning magazine six times a year in which each edition is dedicated to a single topic. Its two most recent issues provided in-depth coverage of the city's growing unemployment problem and the thriving and corrupt jail industry in New York City.

Its April-May issue was dedicated to the mighty borough of Brooklyn, a borough with a population that makes it the fourth-largest city in the country. City Limits held its at a "Nothing but Networking" event earlier this year at Bed-Stuy's Restoration's Skylight Gallery.

The Brooklyn Bureau will produce in-depth enterprise journalism on local issues and activities of the borough’s nonprofit sector, civic and social institutions, and communities, as well as aggregate and amplify existing news coverage from Bureau-members and existing community outlets."

The funding City Limits received was a part of a $50,000 grant challenge by the Knight Foundation to develop an information channel for local residents that would engage in a unique way. The Brooklyn Community Foundation—the largest public philanthropy in the borough which for projects throughout Central Brooklyn— agreed to match the Knight Foundation grant of $50,000 over two years.

“This a much-needed step forward for Brooklyn. While Brooklyn gets a lot of ink in the trends and travel sections of national news outlets, many of our biggest communities have little access to essential local news, making the borough’s voice much softer than its 2.5 million headcount demands,” said Marilyn Gelber, president of the Brooklyn Community Foundation. “The Brooklyn Bureau will create greater awareness for the many complex issues that affect our neighbors. By building audience connectivity and concern.” 

The Brooklyn Bureau will spotlight media-deprived communities like Central Brooklyn, as well as immigrant groups and areas undergoing change. Through its network of sources, the Bureau will also be a one-stop resource for links to hyper-local Brooklyn news stories from across the web. 

This will enable Brooklynites to engage in conversation with each other across present barriers, and strengthen Brooklyn’s voice across the city as a whole. Beyond the dedicated website site, stories will be syndicated daily through Twitter and Facebook, RSS feeds to news network members, products for mobile readers and more.

To stay informed on the development and launch of the Brooklyn Bureau, go to www.citylimits.org/brooklynbureau.