Canberra has Awesome Media : The Riot Act

A city's media landscape reflects the qualities of its people. In Canberra, the only local dead-tree newspaper is the Canberra Times, which is under the Fairfax umbrella and is pretty much just a rebranded Sydney Morning Herald. It isn't actively horrible like a News Limited paper, but just irrelevant to the city. In most smaller cities like Canberra, that would be all.

But Canberra isn't like most cities. With a young technology literate populace and none of the historical inertia that clogs innovation Canberra wanted something better. So Johnboy started the Riot Act. 

The Riot Act is a hyperlocal news source founded in 2000 that encompasses comment from locals on basically anything that is relevant to them. Like a proto-Reddit but more heavily moderated, professional and with relevant stories instead of cat pictures. It has grown from a local start-up to a similar audience share as established newspaper based websites. 

This makes it a great source for information on what has happened and is going to happen around town. A user compiled whats on guide each weekend covers much that is awesome. Somehow the culture hasn't yet spread to the other capitals, so the Riot Act local media mentality remains peculiar to Canberra. Local celebrities and politicians lurk in the comments section, given equal weight to Joe from the street. Such a democratic institution in the home of Australia's democracy - beautiful in its own way. 

The Riot Act is a Canberra media icon and should be your 2nd source (after this blog of course) for local news. 

Just ignore the comments on any story related to cycling...