Getting to know your 9Neighbors

This Wednesday we'll hear from Rick Burnes, the co-founder of Faneuil Media, who will demonstrate and discuss 9Neighbors. A local-news aggregation site, 9Neighbors pulls in news from five cities and towns (why not nine?) in the Boston area from traditional news sources, blogs and the like. Participants vote on which stories are the most important to them, with stories getting the most votes rising to the top of the heap.

There's also a 9Neighbors blog with information about the project, including a link to a do-it-yourself pothole map.

The site raises some questions that I hope you'll think about for Rick's appearance:

• In what ways is 9Neighbors journalism?
• In what ways is it not journalism?
• Is there a role for professional journalists in a project like 9Neighbors?
• Should mainstream news organizations welcome links from 9Neighbors in order to drive traffic to their sites? Or might they look at 9Neighbors as a free rider?

Rick would also like to learn about what you think 9Neighbors does well and how you think it could be improved.