The City Maven signs up with KPCC's website

I missed this note on Alice Walton's site this morning. The City Hall reporter who launched The City Maven in 2010 as a newly minted master's degree holder from Northwestern's journalism school is taking a job on the web side of fast-growing KPCC. "As of Monday, I will be the politics blogger for the station’s digital media department," she wrote at the bottom of her morning report. Asked to elaborate, Walton says via email she will blog for KPCC's politics blog under her own name. It sounds as if the City Maven brand will continue for now — she will still tweet via @TheCityMaven, for instance — but that some other details are still evolving. "I can't wait to get started with KPCC," she says. "It's a great opportunity and an exciting newsroom to join." The former City News Service reporter is, I believe, currently the president of the Society of Professional Journalists chapter in Los Angeles.

I guess it remains to be seen how the City Maven mix of headlines, links and daybook items for City Hall insiders translates to a KPCC audience that mostly doesn't live in the city of Los Angeles, let alone care about the daily schedule of pressers and committee meetings in the building. (And what influence if any the Pasadena editors exert; the evolution of Blogdowntown under KPCC has not been universally well received, I gather.) I've been an early and enthusiastic supporter of Walton's experiment. I assume she'll expand into posting about government doings beyond City Hall. But if the mix changes too much she'll be missed among the niche of wonks and reporters who value sane City Hall monitoring. I look forward to the next chapter.