"A lot of my focus has been to help the company as we have evolved from what was once a magazine [Good with a complementary Web site and some media events to a more diversified media company, to go from start-up to scale-up," he said. In the coming months, Good Worldwide will drastically "scale up" various branches of the media company."

It's my town!!! Very interesting to watch how this works and if it will fill in a gap. Personally, I follow local news through Chicagoist and Beachwood Reporter--who act as both aggregators, cultural afficianados (much more in tune w/my tastes than the tribune) and commentators on news provided by the MSM here including the Chicago Tribune, Sun-Times, local television, etc...
I also wonder how this builds out on the biz side, if it's going to increase advertising.
One last note--as much as I appreciate what HuffPo is trying to do--unpaid writers/reporters is not a sustainable model for the individuals that contribute. You're going to either have a set of opinions/reporting from individuals who can afford to give their time/resources for free which will only give a certain range of perspectives and people spending time reporting/opining for free because it's an important way to build their career, but not their pocketbooks.

Archive: For Book re: Jena 6. Howard Witt of The Chicago Tribune discusses role and growth of black blogosphere.

"But what I find in the black blogosphere you have people who don't profess to be political professionals. They're just ordinary folks coming from a range of interests and professions but they have these very thoughtful takes on the civil rights issues of the day. They bring to bear their own experience and they give voice to a lot of stuff that just doesn't get aired either in the mainstream media or in the kind of liberal blogs. Plus the black blogosphere is not distinguished by a particular political orthodoxy.....

Interestingly, what the black blogs proved [with Jena] is they don't need for the "white blogs" to pay attention to them for these to become big national stories, to get their story out. They get a lot of attention. They get a lot of results. "