The New York Times yesterday launched The Local East Village, a hyper-local news blog written in collaboration with the Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute at New York University, Editor & Publisher reported.

The site will cover New York City's East Village neighborhood, which has 70,000 residents and extends from 14th Street to Houston Street and between Broadway and the East River, NYULocal.com explained.

"The Local East Village gives us another opportunity to explore ways to provide quality online journalism to communities here and across the country," deputy metro editor of The New York times Mary Ann Giordano said in a statement released by the University.

Richard G. Jones, a professor at the Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute and former reporter of The New York Times, will act a The Local East Village editor while NYU students enrolled in The Hyperlocal Newsroom course will maintain the blog.

However, members of the community will be a key part of the project and are expected to produce at least 50 percent of the content. Readers will be able to submit articles, photographs, multimedia features and news tips through a virtual assignment desk, Journalism.co.uk revealed. Also, any registered user of nytimes.com will have access to a special page to see what assignments are available, the University said.

This is the third hyper-local news blog that The New York Times has launched in the past two years. According E&P, in 2009 the newspaper created two blogs in collaboration with the City University of New York that covered Clinton Hill and Fort Greene in Brooklyn, and Maplewood, Millburn and South Orange in New Jersey. However, two months ago, the sites were transferred to a local website called Baristanet.com.