Neighborhood Soup?

Welcome to Neighborhood Soup, a fortifying medley of news, stories and sounds from the urban grid. It's the news from your city neighborhood.

That's what it says on the 'About Us' page over www.mediamulto.com. The neighborhoods seem to be in Minneapolis, MN US. But who are these people? A whois on the domain brings me to Domains by Proxy, where you can keep your registration info safe from the prying eyes of spammers. I can't find any contact email addresses.

I did discover that the domain - mediamulto.com - was created on March 16, 2006.

It looks and sounds like a citizens journalism site. Note the links down the left side: neighborhoods, crime alerts, Minneapolis weather and parks, and M.C.A.D. What? That's the Minneapolis College of Art and Design and it's the only academic institution listed. I think it's a clue as to ownership of the site. MCAD student(s)?

Over by the search box, 'neighborhood soup' is displayed and each letter is a link. I thought it was hidden advertising at first but the links range from BBC news to a photo of the Minneapolis skyline, to a photo (at Flickr) of construction of the new wing at the Minneapolis Institute of Art (adjacent to MCAD).

Couple of notes to the author(s) if they should happen to find me:

1. The title of your feed is 'Joomla Powered Site.' Oops.
2. You don't have a discovery meta tag to light up the Firefox RSS indicator in the address bar (and to allow easy subscribing with Bloglines.
3. The link on the 'n' of your linking letters is broken.

Ah ha!
I originally linked to this site via the E-Democracy Minneapolis Issues forum and I was finally able to dig up the post that announced it:

It's an unofficial bit of experimentation by a handful of Star Tribune writers who would prefer not to cede monopoly status over Minneapolis news to our friend Craig Cox...

Craig Cox is managing editor at Twin Cities Daily Planet.

So we have journalists anonymously blogging. Why not identify yourselves, folks. I think there's a credibility issue here.

And why the MCAD link?

- posted by Peter Fleck @ Permalink 10:04 PM [to Del.icio.us]