About

Brooklyn The Borough was born in 2008 as a column written by Nicole Brydson for the New York Observer. When the recession hit and layoffs at the paper kicked off, Nicole gathered a community, built BrooklynTheBorough.com and started on a journey to fill a need and create a new ad-free local media space. This site is one of many iterations BrooklynTheBorough.com has been since 2009.

The site has gotten attention from the mainstream media for development issues, policing and cultural coverage over many years. Our biggest hit was an in depth piece on Gowanus development involving a corrupt developer trying to stave off a Superfund designation, while Whole Foods quietly backed away from their original plans. Today there is a Whole Foods and different developers working along the Canal.

The time which we have spent on these pages has paralleled the time in which Brooklyn has become a state of mind, along with being a geographical place. The pace at which new media have globalized and commodified our local culture has been overwhelming at times, especially for those who remember New York City before it seamlessly integrated with the internet.

Over time, BrooklynTheBorough.com became the birthplace and conceptual basis for interchanges.io, a new media cooperative founded by Misfit Media that aims to connect creative people and organizations in a digital space free of advertising. If you’d like to build your own space for media, and connect with others who share these values, please join us.