news and views

By E&P Staff

NEW YORK The Wahoo (Neb.) Newspaper, a longtime community weekly owned by the Omaha World-Herald Co., has partnered with WikiCity Guides -- which offers a hyperlocal online community guide that anyone can edit.

Similar to Wikipedia, WikiCity Guides is a free wiki to which any user can contribute, and is designed to promote local community, commerce, tourism and everyday life within the Wahoo community. It provides unique local content on places, events and people of interest to those associated with any of its 22,000 U.S. towns.

WikiCity Guides serves these communities much like a local blog, but utilizes the same open-source MediaWiki software that powers Wikipedia. Any of its readers are allowed to contribute content. Contributors to the WikiCity Guides can promote their favorite local businesses, share reviews, or chronicle historical landmarks and traditions within the community, for example. “WikiCity Guides was developed with the premise that everybody knows a little something about something,” co-founder Pat Lazure said in a statement. “It cultivates a free, collaborative resource for anyone to share their knowledge of Wahoo. The site is a collection of local facts, figures, businesses, and opinions that will continue to grow in size and usefulness with each edit.” “With this partnership, the Wahoo Newspaper provides a useful tool to connect with our readers, and for our readers to connect with one another to promote and spotlight everything Wahoo has to offer,” said Wahoo Newspaper Publisher Shon Barenklau. WikiCity Guides is looking to help additional newspapers expand their products beyond traditional news by helping readers become further engaged online about their communities. Check out the Wahoo WikiCity main page, here.