"We want to continue to expand our network of collaborations, in the New York area and across the country, through associations with individuals, companies and institutions that share our values - foremost, increasing the volume and scope of quality journalism about issues that matter," as Jim Schachter, the digital iniatives editor at the Times, put it in a press release this afternoon.

N.Y.U. will apparently help coordinate the content--much of which will come from a class, appropriately titled "The Hyperlocal Newsroom"--with Mary Ann Giordano, a deputy Metropolitan editor.

The director of N.Y.U.'s journalism insitute, Brooke Kroeger, said the school will bring, in addition to its new, state-of-the-art facilities in the East Village, an "ever-replenishing pool of student and faculty talent backed by the vast research resources of a distinguished university."

Elsewhere in uncompensated journalism, The Huffington Post launched its college vertical today, complete with a call for free labor. While a Craigslist post late last year suggested that interns involved in the site would be paid, it sounds like all student contributors won't be so lucky.

Explained HuffPo citizen journalism editor Adam Clark Estes in an email:

We do have a small budget to set student journalists up with equipment and to cover costs, but they won't be paid on a traditional story-by-story basis. As with the rest of the citizen journalists at Huffington Post, we expect that the by-line and exposure offered by our millions of readers will be the best way to give credit.

Despite this, he added that he was "a big fan of paying student journalists" and was looking into ways to make it happen.

This is probably a good plan. Among the inaugural articles posted on the vertical: an op-ed from NYU's Washington Square News, with the headline "Internships The New Form Of Slavery."