Site News: My Year At The Chicago Tribune's Spinoff

It's been about a year now that I've been posting Chicago education news and commentary at ChicagoNow.com, an offshoot "hive" of blogs (think Huffington Post) published by the Chicago Tribune.  My little blog -- District 299 -- got spun off this site in 2006 or so, and focuses exclusively on Chicago schools.  As of this summer, the big bad ChicagoNow.com generates 500 comments a day and 15 million pageviews a month and was recently recognized for its innovative model by Mashable and Poynter along with WikiLeaks, Everyblock, Spot.us, and Fwix (it's true -- click the link) .  Truth be told, most of the other blogs on ChicagoNow are lifestyle and sports blogs, or neighborhood blogs, but I've gained a lot of readers moving from the original standalone site and the period I was with Catalyst, and have learned a lot from being part of the ChicagoNow team (they've learned a lot from me, too).