We’re excited to announce a collaboration with The New York Times and a new section on EveryBlock New York City: political news items.

One of our goals at EveryBlock is to notify you when local news sites or blogs mention something in your neighborhood. This far, we’ve focused on specific addresses and places, which you can see in our “locations in the media” section. There, we catalog local news coverage to figure out which articles mention which particular places.

Now, we’re taking this philosophy further by applying it to local elected representatives. This new section, “political news items,” notifies you whenever your local elected representatives — such as your city councilman or state assemblyman — are mentioned in The New York Times.

Here’s an example of what this might look like, from the EveryBlock page for 170 5th Ave. in Manhattan:

This is made possible by a collaboration between EveryBlock and The New York Times, whose excellent Represent site catalogs Times news coverage by elected representative. The Times makes its data available to us so that it can get added to the local news mix on EveryBlock.

Enjoy the new feature, and, as always, let us know if you have any ideas for more local information to add to our site by e-mailing feedback at everyblock.com.

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Go ahead and click on that Example link above to see… well… an example.  It’s a pretty slick interface, you would have no idea there is 3rd party involvement, until you click one of the Politics links and are redirected to the NYTimes.com article.  A deep link?!  Yes!  Gatehouse eat your heart out!  Another Home Run by Adrian Holovaty and his team.  Now it’s up to The New York times to monetize this new avenue of traffic.

In an interview with the Chicago Tribune from August 2008 Holovaty made this comment:

“I’m just amazed at how much the news industry does because other people are doing it,” he says. “There’s no sense of individuality or entrepreneurship.”

Looks like someone finally listened and gave the guy a shot.  I wish him the best of luck and am (im)patiently waiting for the arrival of EveryBlock NJ.