Patrick Beeson

Everyone's favorite journalism wunderkind Adrian Holovaty and his crew of three -- including design wunderkind Wilson Miner -- launched EveryBlock this afternoon, much to the chagrin of news corporations everywhere.

And I say "chagrin" not because of the innovative manner in which it collects and sorts information, or even the beautiful interface. Rather, EveryBlock is doing what newspapers used to do by bringing local back.

The premise of the site is simple. Like Twitter's "What are you doing?", EveryBlock asks "What's happening in my neighborhood?"

There are many things happening, as it turns out. Not only does EveryBlock "geocode" news stories -- classifies them by location -- it also aggregates Craigslist missed connections and lost and found, Flickr photos, Yelp reviews and information available to the public (for Chicago):

• Business licenses
• Restaurant health inspections
• City press releases
• Crimes
• Filmings
• Liquor license applications
• Street closures

This information varies depending on the city and data sources it provides. San Francisco EveryBlock provides public housing listings, while New York gives up graffiti cleaned.

Holovaty and his "people person" Daniel O'Neil -- what a great title -- are actively seeking additional data providers as well.

I know many print, err traditional, journalists are going to scoff that this isn't journalism. No, it's the new journalism; the journalism that users can use for their own purposes -- EveryBlock itself is a mashup at heart -- because they can drill down to what is meaningful to them.

But whiz-bang information and great looks aside, does EveryBlock disrupt the newspapers? According to Adrian in a Poynter Online interview, the answer is no:

...YouTube, MySpace and, heck, all Web sites, are competitors to traditional media. I don't consider EveryBlock a competitor to traditional news outlets because we only include news that has to do with specific, granular locations -- not citywide, statewide or nationwide news. With this in mind, I see EveryBlock as being quite complementary to traditional news organizations.

I think Holovaty is correct on this point. I also think that newspapers need to pay attention to how EveryBlock treats information (again from Holovaty's Poynter interview):

Some people use it to refer to neighborhoods, while others use it to refer to entire suburban areas. But I think the concept of address-specific news is important because, well, people tend to be more interested in news that happens near them.

Newspapers have the ability to do local information better than anyone else. This will change as more startups like EveryBlock disrupt this concept however.

Also, EveryBlock will not be a threat based on its business model because, well, it doesn't really have one (Google Ads aside). Since site development was funded by Holovaty's $1 million grant from the Knight Foundation, it doesn't really need to make corporation-size revenue either.

Though I'd imagine the Djangocentric data architecture will provide oodles of SEO juice for folks searching for information about their city, neighborhood or street.

So while many city newspaper Web sites continue to blast national AP stories on their home page, EveryBlock distills data down to the street level, you know, where the users live.

Holovaty hints at additional cities for EveryBlock soon, though I can't say I except a Knoxville section in the near future.

In the meantime, we journerdists can kick back and watch EveryBlock take it to the streets. And continue to lament not living in Chicago.