Jose Zamora is a Journalism Program Associate at Knight Foundation

 As local news coverage shrinks, bloggers are bringing communities the news and information they need.

But what are the needs of bloggers covering local communities?

• Sustainability models
• Content
• Digital training
• A blogger network
• Designing skills
• Legal support

These were the most common answers to that question at a meeting organized last week by UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism and its Knight Digital Media Center.’ The goal of the meeting was to share ideas, discuss common problems and opportunities, and explore ways to collaborate.

By the end of the meeting a blogger network was formed. Everyone agreed to share content, cross-link to each other and start meeting once a month. A Google group was also created to keep the conversation going.

The Knight Digital Media Center started thinking of different ways to support local community bloggers.

If you are a hyper-local blogger you can find useful resources here:

J-Lab Citizen Media Law Project Knight Digital Media Center Knight Center for Specialized Journalism

And don’t forget to join Placeblogger