Later this summer, we're going to try to put together the first in what we hope becomes a regular series of regional editorial meetings. They'll mark an effort on our part to open up the process of deciding what news is to our neighborhood reporters and the community at large.

We believe that these conversations will stimulate the sorts of critical public discourses theorized by Habermas, albeit in a hyperlocal context (excuse that please, I can't help myself).

The basic idea is that we think about what regions of the city we have enough density in to get five or six people to the table. They'll discuss the stories they're working on, anything they think deserves more attention in our coverage, and think about what issues are impacting the larger area that they are a part of.

For example, we have a good number of folks concentrated around our Andersonville office on the far north side. We'd ask people from Uptown, Andersonville, Rogers Park, and Edgewater to meet with an organizer from the Daily News.

We'd ask everyone to think about what direction the site is going in for their neighborhoods and where they'd like it to go. Then we'd move into the specifics of issues impacting the region and how we can better cover them. If community organizations wanted to discuss what they were working on, this would be the place for it.

This is part of a process to make the Daily News as rooted and responsive to the communities that we work in as possible. I think it will work, and hopefully can serve as a forum to connect news reporting with the communities that are being reported on more deeply.