There’s a new player in the New York civic news game this morning, and City Limits is proud to be its teammate: MetroFocus, a website run by WNET (the people who bring you Channel 13 and WLIW Channel 21) that will eventually evolve into a regular nighttime television broadcast.

In recent years, as traditional news providers contracted in the face of declining readership and the recession’s soft advertising market, nonprofit and community media became more aggressive, especially in pursuing the kinds of news—very local stories, public service reporting and investigative work—from which for-profit was retreating. City Limits is celebrating its 35th anniversary this year, but four-and-a-half years ago we made the strategic decision to focus on long-form, investigative journalism. Since then, several other nonprofit journalistic endeavors have popped up in the city.

MetroFocus marks the next phase in the emergence of nonprofit, locally focused media. Its website will aggregate in-depth news from partners like City Limits and combine it with life-of-the-city stuff (like today’s lead story, “What Makes A New York Deli Truly Great?”).

City Limits’ initial contributions include a snippet from our May issue on prison sexual misconduct and a take on our forthcoming issue focusing on poverty, which comes out tomorrow.