Your site has to become cool before anyone is going to bother reporting on it. You don't get automatic reporter points just because you feel strongly that you should, or even because you work hard at it. As it stands, your site is Yet Another Portal or News Aggregator or whatever and it's just not a particularly compelling... thing.
Duly noted. This sort of reaction is helpful. Of course I think what I'm doing is unique (first local social news site), but if others don't get that from a quick visit, or they think that's a pretty "meh" idea, then that's good to hear.
Everyblock's a great site, but they're addressing a different problem in a different way. They're scraping rather than letting people post to the site, and they're not interested in what's interesting in Chicago, but what's happening near you. It's a little different. My goal with the Citizen is to have a front page that represents everything you should read right now to know what's cool and relevant in Chicago.
Like every other web site, yes, we're competing for people's time and attention. This isn't an editorial-driven magazine or online newspaper. It's a service that lets people share and rate local stuff with their friends.
> This isn't an editorial-driven magazine or online newspaper.
So what? Your stated goal "a front page that represents everything you should read right now to know what's cool and relevant in Chicago." is direct competition for every general-purpose news outlet in Chicago.
They don't think "he has no editors" or "he's not calling it a newspaper". They see "he's trying to be the place people go to find out what's cool and relevant" because that's what they're doing.
