CREDIT WNET’s MetroFocus site will look at policy issues and the peculiarly insular subjects that occupy New Yorkers.
A few weeks behind schedule, WNET’s MetroFocus Web site is set to make its official debut Monday, joining the ranks of Gothamist, DNAinfo, NearSay and numerous others in keeping tabs on local news, culture and urban life in New York City.
As promised when announced in March by WNET, the parent company of New York City-area public broadcasters WNET/Channel 13 and WLIW/Channel 21, the site in its first days will devote space to serious policy issues, including an examination of “5 Ways New Yorkers Say Welfare Policies Fail Them,” which is adapted from a report in City Limits Magazine. A “Media Mulch” column aggregates local news from other publications.
Although MetroFocus, at thirteen.org/metrofocus, has reporters who will update it twice a day, Laura van Straaten, the site’s editor in chief and executive producer, said by telephone that it is not meant to be a destination for breaking news. “We’ll be doing a lot of write-arounds, finding the best stuff that other people are doing and wrapping it up in a smart way,” she said.
The “soul of the site” is an area called “MetroLife,” Ms. van Straaten said, with such initial pieces as “What Makes a New York Deli Truly Great?” and excerpts from a new book, “I Feel Relatively Neutral About New York.” New Yorkers, she said, “tend to be navel-gazing as a people, and I haven’t seen a place where you can explore that in full.”
In the fall, once final financing is raised, WNET plans to expand MetroFocus to a half-hour television program, which will start out monthly or weekly, said Neal Shapiro, WNET’s chief executive. He said WNET expects to make MetroFocus into a daily program in the new year, which would be the company’s second local weekday news program, after taking over production of a half-hour newscast for NJTV, formerly known as the New Jersey Network, on July 1.
Article source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=4db49c949bdd2958f6dc83a97c93688f