Wrote a story this week about Front Porch Forum. It’s a free, neighborhood email newsletter service run by Burlington resident Michael Wood-Lewis.

Wood-Lewis started Front Porch Forum in his own neighborhood, the Five Sisters section of Burlington’s South End. It’s apparently been highly successful there — check out this mention in Cottage Living Magazine — so he’s now expanded it to include all the neighborhoods in Chittenden County.

It’s an interesting concept, though I wonder how well it’ll take off in places like, um, Winooski, where I live. I would love to use it to communicate with my neighbors, but I have no energy to promote it. Beyond, you know, writing an article in the paper and mentioning it on my blog.

Seven Days’ deputy publisher and co-owner Cathy Resmer is a writer, editor and advocate for local journalism. She works in the paper’s Burlington office and lives vicariously through the reporters while raising money to pay them. Cathy started at Seven Days as a freelance writer in 2001 and still has the Rolodex to prove it. As the paper’s first online editor, she launched Seven Days email newsletters and started the paper’s first social media accounts. Cathy has overseen Kids VT, Vermont’s...