All that talk about ex-Courant folks starting their own online news service has prompted Carlos Cunha, former Courant copy editor,  to actually do it.

He’s looking for help, and here’s what he has to say:

I’m inclined to join the online newspapering gold rush (a fool’s gold rush?)
and have for the last month or so been tinkering with a site for it. A beta
version, along with an experimental manifesto/mission statement, can be seen
at hartfordobserver.com. (Bear in mind that I’m still mastering the
technical stuff.) It would be deriving its stories from more or less the
same coverage area as the Courant, with a concentration on West Hartford and
(at least in terms of cultural life) Hartford.

This would be a local but not parochial publication. It means to be an
enjoyable, thought-provoking and hopefully habit-forming read beyond its
local interest.

In any case, I’m sufficiently far along in the project that I’ve decided I
should plumb the ex-Courant crowd for someone who might be interested in
helping me develop it further as a full-on partner. This would also be
someone who, at least initially, until I can afford day care for my twins,
would be free to do a little more reportorial legwork than me. I would like
to start posting real stories within a couple of weeks and officially launch
the thing in about a month’s time.

I am also, of course, looking for contributors – of reportage, reviews,
columns, photography. I would not be able to pay you initially, but I do
mean this to become a commercial operation. Once we have established a
respectable audience, I’ll be looking to contract commission-only sales
people, and once we do begin generating income, we will try to pay our
contributors something. We may also come up with some sort of equity-sharing
scheme.

Those who would like to be listed as contributors (it obliges you to
nothing,) please do forward your name to me along with whatever brief bio
you would like to see appended to it.