Daniel Maurer, co-founder of the New York magazine restaurant blog Grub Street, has been named editor of The Local East Village, a New York Times community web site run in collaboration with New York University’s Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute.

Daniel Maurer Named New Local East Village Editor
Daniel Maurer (below), co-founder of the New York magazine restaurant blog Grub Street, has been named editor of The Local East Village, a New York Times community web site run in collaboration with NYU’s Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute.

Daniel Maurer, co-founder of the New York magazine restaurant blog Grub Street, has been named editor of The Local East Village, a New York Times community web site run in collaboration with New York University’s Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute.

“Daniel emerged from a field of well over a hundred highly qualified candidates,” said Brooke Kroeger, the Institute director. “He impressed us with his ideas, his digital sophistication, his passion for this neighborhood, so often featured on Grub Street, and his proven know-how in mining information at the local community level.”

Maurer was an online producer and editor of nightlife listings at New York magazine before co-founding Grub Street, one of New York’s pioneering restaurant blogs, in 2006. While writing more than 7,500 posts over five years, Maurer grew the blog’s traffic steadily and helped expand it to five other cities. Grub Street New York was nominated for three James Beard Foundation Journalism Awards—it won in 2008 (for Multimedia Writing on Food) and then again in 2011 (for Group Blog) when Maurer was chief editor. It has also been nominated for a National Magazine Award and won a MIN Best of the Web award in 2007. 

“During my five years at Grub Street I saw neighborhood blogs grow from a curiosity to a tremendous source of information,” Maurer said, “I believe hyperlocal, collaborative journalism will only continue to grow in ambition and value. I’m delighted to join a team, at The Local East Village, that’s as excited about evolving this new wave of journalism as I am, in a neighborhood that has always been home to the avant garde.”

Before joining New York, Maurer was assistant editor at Grove/Atlantic. He edited bestselling author Winston Groom’s 1942: The Year That Tried Men’s Souls as well as Michael Tolkin’s Under Radar. He also acquired nonfiction titles, such as Pigeons by Andrew Blechman, and novels, including I, Lucifer by Glen Duncan.

Maurer is the author of a book of satirical humor, Brocabulary, and his humor and journalism have appeared in The New York TimesMetro, McSweeneys.net, and Gawker, among other publications. Currently at work on a novel, Maurer was a contributor to Shecky’s Bar, Club, and Lounge Guide: 2005, and his story “The Condiment War” was anthologized in Lost and Found: Stories from New York. His personal interests include music (at the Knitting Factory, he edited the Knotes program guide), travel (he has published dispatches from Chile and Argentina), and the history of New York City and especially the East Village, where he has rented Allen Ginsberg’s old apartment on East 12th Street.  

Maurer succeeds Richard G. Jones, an award-winning veteran local and national reporter for The New York Times and The Philadelphia Inquirer, who served as the site’s inaugural editor. Jones moves on to other projects, including completion of a dissertation for his doctoral program at the University of Maryland.

“The Local has proven to be a wonderful vehicle for The Times to experiment in news delivery and community collaboration,” said Mary Ann Giordano, the editor at The Times who oversees The Local. “We are confident that Daniel will lead us in new and exciting directions, while building on the foundation of quality journalism and community service that Rich Jones established during The Local East Village’s first year.”

The Local East Village (LEV), launched in the fall of 2010 to cover New York City’s East Village, was built by NYU faculty and students working with Times journalists and software developers and serves as a learning laboratory in community journalism for both The Times and NYU. For more on the Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute, go to http://journalism.nyu.edu/. For more on The Local East Village, go to http://nytimes.com/eastvillage, and for the project’s back story, to http://journalism.nyu.edu/lev/.

Daniel Maurer

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James Devitt
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