It's a sad day for local news fans. NBC News has shuttered EveryBlock, a hyperlocal news site that pulled in and mapped useful information from a variety of rich sources, including Craigslist posts, police reports, restaurant inspections and Yelp reviews. NBC announced the shutdown in a blog post on Thursday and it is effective immediately. The post has already racked up more than 630 comments, mostly by surprised loyal users who made up the active commenting community. Launched in 2008 in Chicago by Adrian Holovaty, EveryBlock started as an exciting experiment with a two-year $1.1 million grant from the Knight Foundation. The company was acquired by MSNBC.com a year later, and in 2012 NBC News bought MSNBC.com.
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EveryBlock plotted a mix of commercial, government and nonprofit feeds
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The site was an experiment in data and mapping based journalism
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EveryBlock was started in 2008 and had sites for 19 cities.
Unfortunately for the committed users and 10 employees working on the project, the model wasn't profitable enough for @placeholder to keep it open.