The staff at Creative Loafing named Qcitymetro.com best local website in this year’s Best of Charlotte competition.

In noting Qcitymetro’s work, the alternative weekly wrote: “…the need to keep up with the development of the black community is paramount. To that end, Qcitymetro.com is at the forefront of delivering news about black people in the Queen City.”

G. Burkins

Qcitymetro Editor/Publisher Glenn Burkins said he believes the selection “validates what we’ve been trying to do for the last two and a half years, which is to build a quality website that African Americans in this city can be proud of.”

Burkins, a former deputy managing editor at the Charlotte Observer who also worked as a reporter at the Philadelphia Inquirer and Wall Street Journal, launched Qcitymetro in December 2008 to provide news and information to the growing number of African Americans who call Charlotte home. The website has about 30,000 monthly unique users, Burkins said.

As the nation’s demographics and media landscape have changed, even some companies in the mainstream media are taking note of black readers.

Earlier this year, Burkins said, the Washington Post sent two editors to Charlotte to spend the day learning about Qcitymetro’s operations and its approach to reaching African Americans. He said the Post recently announced plans to launch its own local black news site in the Washington, D.C., area.

Next month in New York, Burkins will join a panel advising top newspaper executives on how to better reach diverse audiences.

Creative Loafing has been compiling its list of the best—and, in some cases, the worst—that Charlotte has to offer for the last 24 years. Click here to find out who else made the 2011 list, or pick up a copy of Creative Loafing at newsstands.

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