If you read media blogs with any frequency, you’re familiar with the common perception that we have all the information we already need online. We just need better ways to aggregate and organize it.

I disagree.

People can’t find the breadth or the depth of local information that they seek. It’s not fully baked news stories that are necessarily missing either. It’s shorter takes on a wide range of topics that you wouldn’t normally find in a local newspaper. It’s something I’m calling “blurb journalism” in my mind as I continue to noodle on the concept.

The weekly column on “The Medium” in the Sunday New York Times addresses this opportunity today. Virigina Heffernan, who does a nice job analyzing new online trends, digs into the case of s suicide in her Brooklyn neighborhood and is frustrated at the lack of news coverage – or locally generated citizen reporting – she finds online. (See Narrowcast News.)

This is one example of information that people want, but can’t find. Recently, I had a similar situation:

A father whose children go to grade school with my kids paid the price for standing up for our neighborhood. He was out walking the dog after dark and took exception to some youngsters revving their engines and peeling out in a gravel parking lot at the neighborhood park. They struck back, beating him up and sending him to the hospital for several days with a broken jaw. This wouldn’t have run as a traditional news story in a newspaper or on a local TV news broadcast. But it was hugely important to people in that neighborhood.

The web is the perfect place for this type of information to be created and shared. To date, blogs are the platform of choice, but we need a more generalized framework that will allow citizens who aren’t dedicated enough to power a local blog 24/7 to share with one another news, tidbits, tips and even gossip.

Blurbs. Short, frequent information updates on a specific geographic area. This is the need we are aiming to fill at Serra Media with Newsgarden. The latest version is now live in Gig Harbor. Check it out, and let me know what you think.

I’m officially on “the countdown” with my day job at The News Tribune. If I work through September part-time (as is the current plan) then I have something like 12 days left at the paper after this week.

So this decision to branch out on my own is getting very real. Which makes me excited and a bit anxious. Meaning I love running across great inspiration from one of my favorite bloggers as I did yesterday …

The alternative is to do your best to pick a direction … and then do it. Loudly. With patience and passion. (Loud doesn’t mean boorish. Loud means proud and joyful and with confidence.)

No flitting, no waiting for proof. Just consistent, overwhelming performance in pursuit of a vision you believe in. That’s far more important than which direction you chose in the first place.

Thanks, Mr. Godin, for summing up my new goals so succintly.

The dramatic decline of newspapers’ revenues from its once-dominant classifieds business has been well documented. And yes, everyone’s still blaming Craig. But now there is activity in the startup tech space aiming to unseat Craig. Techcrunch reports that iList has raised $1.5 million, claiming “Craigslist is so 1995!” on the company’s web site.

Someone will, of course, succeed in replacing Craiglist. The newspaper industry should have made it a top priority many years ago. (Now it may be up to Steve Outing and his Reinventing Classifieds project.) It’s unfortunate the industry was asleep at the wheel the first time. If it happens again, it could very well be fatal.

I’m checking the place out, opening up the cupboards, figuring out what the switches turn on which lights on this shiny new Wordpress blog. It’s funny, but there are many similarities to launching a new blog on a new platform with moving into a new house or apartment. I’m excited to see what’s possible here.