If you follow our partner websites Center Square Journal and Roscoe View Journal, you may have noticed that their future existance is up in the air. After a great three year run, founder and publisher Mike Fourcher has announced he is moving away from the neighborhood news scene and on to a new project. To determine the future of the publications, he is hosting a meeting to gather community feedback about what to do with the sites. Fourcher has said he is prepared to hand them off, convert them into a non-profit, or shut them down completely based on community feedback and support. The announcement created quite the Buzz amongst the local news scene and has been reported on Crain’s Chicago, Chicagoist and Columbia Journalism Review amongst others.

Because of this, I’ve received a number of inquiries asking what all this means for Edgeville Buzz. We’re not going anywhere, at least not for the time being. I originally partnered with Mike in 2011 in hopes of making Edgeville Buzz even better, and we certainly accomplished that and thensome. Not only did the partnership provide us with a better platform to deliver our product (who remembers the old Edgewater Community Buzz Blogspot website?) but personally I’ve learned a ton about how to deliver a more quality news product to our readers. To that end the partnership was a huge success, where we did not succeed was in converting Edgeville Buzz from a small local blog to a revenue generating machine, but that’s ok.

We’ve been covering Edgewater & Andersonville since 2008 and we’re not prepared to throw in the towel. That being said, I can’t honestly say I plan to do this forever. Who knows, maybe the CSJ/RVJ community meeting will develop a new model for community-run news, but if it doesn’t I want you to know that for the time being we plan to continue doing our thing.

If you have thoughts about the future of Edgeville Buzz or would like to write with us email me: jeremy@edgevillebuzz.com.