In an effort to understand what kind of role the new website GoLocalWorcester is playing in the effort to report “hard news” in Worcester, here’s a rundown of what they posted in the last 6 days.

My RSS reader caught 77 posts from February 17-23. (I don’t see anything for Sunday Feb 19.) 34 of these seem to have something to do with Worcester.

• Press release on GLW’s relationship with worcesterscene.com
• Three articles on their rankings of 392 regional high schools
• Profile of the #1 school, Mass Academy
• WPI students build robots
• Free tax prep at Worcester State
• Op-ed saying we need more judges etc. (there are some facts in this)
• Crime stats at local colleges with only the most superficial analysis.
• Blurbs on three “hidden” gems which are not hidden.
• Article on an actual hidden gem, the Firehouse, focusing solely on whether there might be a licensing issue.
• Upcoming casinos might compete with the Hanover, DCU, etc.
• Article titled “Exclusive: Worcester’s Bryan LaHair to Start for Cubs”. Not sure what “Exclusive” means in this context. T&G reported this story the day before.
• Rundown of how the city is managing employee healtcare costs. No comparisons with similar cities or nationwide stats.
• Upcoming speaker at Clark
• Clark basketball player shoots two buzzer-beaters in one game
• Something about scholarship rules and Holy Cross football
• Local high school baseball players
• WPI basketball team going to a tournament
• Local college basketball roundup
• Unemployment down
• Dry profile of the Southeast Asian Coalition of Central Massachusetts
• “Breaking” news on Clock Tower I think was in the previous day’s T&G
• List of some area yoga studios
• You could buy organic food. This article irritates me. Besides calling Living Earth “The Living Health” (now fixed), this is the sort of thing that would have been helpful 20 years ago, back before organic stuff was at Wal-Mart and McDonald’s. Who doesn’t have organic food in Worcester?
• List of some ethnic restaurants
• List of some restaurants that serve breakfast
• Greek restaurant
• Ideas for inexpensive dates
• Other ideas for dates
• Article on Fallon Community Health Plan’s financial situation that overestimates how much I already know about the business of managing an insurance company. (And introduced me to the word “capitated.”

Neither the writing, reporting, or aggregation at GoLocalWorcester stands out. For an online publication, updates are infrequent. The handful of “hard news” articles are superficial. There’s nothing that makes me want to return to this site.