• New York Times, Friday, September 25, 2009 3:29 PM

Nationwide, online local news operations are popping up left and right to fill the void left by the drastic downsizing of regional newspapers. What makes these new operations more viable than ones they're replacing? Fewer legacy issues; lower overhead; and an operational structure supported by modern technological efficiencies.

Consider the case of one nonprofit local news Web site in the San Francisco area, which is being supported by a $5 million initial grant from F. Warren Hellman, the expertise and labor of public radio station KQED-FM, and the 120 students of the University of California, Berkeley's graduate school of journalism.

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