(Disclosure: Both Lily Q and I are involved in the following NYT-NYU collaboration project) NYU and The New York Times have signed a deal allowing selected students from the Studio 20 Journalism Masters program to plan, launch and oversee the production of a hyperlocal blog catering to the East Village. The blog will boast the Times URL, but be developed by Studio 20 students, in collaboration with NYU faculty and Times editors. Rich Jones, a former Times reporter, will be the editor of the site and he will teach part time at NYU. “The idea of Studio 20 is to teach and learn by running projects that involve innovation and problem solving in journalism, and do it with media partners so that everything we do is done for real. That is why we are collaborating with the New York Times,” said NYU professor Jay Rosen, who is helping to head the project. While the site will function in a similar way to the hyperlocal sites the Times already has running in Ft. Greene/Clinton Hill and Maplewood, this will be the first time journalism students will be heavily involved in the site’s content and design process before the launch. The Times recently allowed CUNY students to take over the Ft. Green Local after it had been up and running for a number of months.

The East Village Local aims to provide news by, for and about the residents of the East Village, focusing heavily on collecting contributions of all kinds from EV Local readers. “We’re going to try to turn this site into a learning lab for local journalism, but also take advantage of what makes the East Village a cultural magnet,” said Rosen. “At the same time this will be a community site, and NYU and NYU students are part of, not apart from the community.”

Both Lily and I are incredibly excited about this project, and have been waiting for quite some time for the press release to go public. Hopefully, the NYU and East Village communities will share our enthusiasm. Once launched around March, the blog will be looking for contributing writers and interns to create content over the summer. We’ll be updating Local with more info about the project as it comes in.