Yourhub.com

Yourhub.com is meant to be a site where everyone in the community can go to find out news about their community specifically. However, it all depends on the area. Some areas have a very interactive community, while others seem to be taking some time to get the hint about the site and what they’re supposed to do with it.
The southern New York section, which I chose because it was closest to my location, was practically empty. There was one news story that wasn’t posted by the buffalonews.com, but I’m not sure it can be considered a news story, simply because it was more like a press release for an inline skating facility, Xtreme Wheels, written by the woman who runs the day-to-day operations. I know I haven’t written a news story in awhile, but last time I checked, that’s called a conflict of interest for news.
The rest of the site specific to southern New York was all shovelware. It was all pulled straight from Buffalonews.com. The community calendar has a lot of items on it, but I think they’re only from other sites for New York and not specifically for the southern site.
Bluffton.com had a lot more contributors from the community. Even the featured bloggers on all the New York sites are the same, including one that is from buffalonews.com. I think that yourhub and bluffton.com are two completely different sites. Bluffton.com is successful because the newspaper has made it clear to the public that their input is valued. I don’t think the same can be said about yourhub.com. It seems like buffalonews.com is rushing to get these sites launched, without spending the time making sure that people will actually go to them and participate. Plus, with Bluffton.com, the users are shown that what they say has an impact or is even included in the news the paper reports. I really don’t think that buffalonews.com can say the same.
Also, when looking to see where the money comes from on this site, I ran into a problem. It seems that either buffalonews.com has taken down the page that held its FAQs and the other important information about the site in general, and the site that holds the advertising rates, or they just haven’t put them up yet.