There’s a growing interest on behalf of the newspaper community to make more direct connections with their readers in order to emphasize the power of their local connections. The company SeeClickFix is helping to enable this outreach with an application that mashes up Google Maps with an interface that lets citizens comment on things that need fixing in their neighborhoods. There’s even an iPhone application and other mobile web applications that give readers a quick and easy means to post issues while they’re out and about.

The site has teamed with such large-market newspapers as the San Francisco Chronicle, the New York Times, the Miami Herald and the Dallas Morning News. Governments have a number of tools at their disposal to receive alerts and to manage citizen concerns. There’s also a means to allow citizens to vote on their priorities so that repair money is spent on items of highest impact.

While many cities have set up 311 services to address such issues, the ease of use of this application along with publicity generated through newspapers, make it a helpful application to harness the crowd.

Read more about the hyperlocal benefits of SeeClickFix in this story in the New York Times.

Read more related Spatial Sustain posts: