A few months ago we told you about an important recommendation made in a report written by the Knight Foundation and the Aspen Institute:

Recommendation 15: Ensure that every local comunity has at least one high-quality online hub.

We talked about how the LocalWiki project aims to offer a workable, sustainable model for building and maintaining amazing local information hubs.

Today we're excited to announce that a white paper commissioned by the Knight Foundation came to the same conclusion, saying:

It is an amazing compendium of useful, user-generated information about the community's history, culture, government, schools, activities and much more. The Davis Wiki site offers almost everything the authors of the Informing Communities report hoped for when they drew up the seven key ingredients for any local online hub listed in Recommendation 15.

The report explains what an "information hub" is and explores three possible forms that local information hubs take, highlighting the LocalWiki project as one of the most promising models. You can read the report here (PDF).

While this is all pretty academic, this recognition represents an important milestone in the advancement of collaborative, community-owned local media.