The Local, the series of community blogs for The New York Times, today introduced the Virtual Assignment Desk that encourages citizens to report or ask for reporting to be done on particular events.
The Fort Greene-Clinton Hill blog, for instance, asks for volunteers for a community meeting. It outlines the agenda, makes a few suggestions on what's needed, and provides a deadline. If you volunteer, you first register. If you need more help, the Times seems prepared to train and answer questions on craft.
It's an interesting effort many will watch. It's no small effort, too, to direct the content, so it'll also be interesting to see how easily sustained the project is. Meantime it's bound to add to the depth of local content --- hyperlocal it might even be called --- on what is already a very rich site of material.
