“A slightly more ambitious attempt to collate the “blogs about a specific area” that exist. Directories like this are doomed to failure in the long term but do act as a useful bridge to the creation of communities of interest”.

Nutshell is one of mine. I think we need to define “success” carefully. I'd count being a “bridge to whatever comes next” as success. In my case if I trigger a broader political (to add to “news” and “information”) awareness in local sites, I'll be happy.

I'm looking for a media which is locally controlled, managed and edited, as opposed to being local franchises of national chains (yes that is a bit of a stereotype).