It's 10 a.m., and Eric Richardson is in his office - a Starbucks at the corner of 11th Street and Grand Avenue in downtown Los Angeles. It's one of the many "offices" he frequents, depending on whether he would rather use the Internet or be closer to a press conference.

"I can tell you where to find WiFi and public restrooms all across downtown," he said.

It's the start of what is often a 14-hour workday for Richardson. As the creator of blogdowntown.com, he and co-editor Ed Fuentes walk the streets of downtown daily, writing about art exhibits, city council meetings and anything else that strikes them as news. The fruits of their labor are four blog posts a day, 85 posts a month, and absolutely no money.

For now.

Richardson represents a new generation of urban bloggers - astute, motivated locals who willingly navigate the nitty-gritty of committee meetings and redevelopment plans for the sole reward of better informing their neighbors.

In its early years, blogging was synonymous with pajama-clad netizens spewing vitriol about politicians or software bugs. But as print newspapers shrink and ranks of paid reporters dwindle, bloggers have stepped up to fill the gap in hyper-local coverage.

As a result, sites like Blog Downtown find themselves poised on the blurry line between blogs and news - a line that, if Richardson has his way, might soon not exist at all.

***

This morning, Richardson is on his Macbook, chatting with the editors of two other prominent Los Angeles blogs, Curbed LA and LAist, sharing story ideas.

A far cry from the race to the scoop common among legacy media, the backpack bloggers' world is a link-based economy. Other editors help Richardson flesh out his ideas, he writes the story, they link to him.

"It's a healthy working relationship," Richardson said.

He starts the day by checking Google news for any breaking stories, and then the comments from the previous day's posts to "put out any fires." From there, he might go to city council meetings or interviews, eat lunch with other bloggers or call Fuentes to coordinate coverage. On slow days, he'll find himself wandering the archives of the L.A. Times for a history story or just strolling the sidewalks, his eyes peeled for ideas.

"A lot of things we write about are things we see because we're just out on the streets," he said.

From flashy gallery openings to crumbling sidewalks, Richardson's posts form a snapshot of L.A.'s struggles and successes through a lens focused on the heart of the city.

In many ways, Richardson is the ideal all-in-one journalist. He has the mind of an analyst, writing all of the code for the Web site, yet with a creative bent that allows him to produce vivid interviews and eye-catching photos. And he is, according to Fuentes, almost unfailingly objective.

"He's so down the middle - that's what attracted me to write for the site," said Fuentes, who is a graphic designer. "Just how meticulous he is, it was refreshing after having worked with so many over-the-top art directors. He always wants to make sure we are a journalistic source and not a blogging source."

Richardson grew up in South Carolina, New Jersey and Michigan and moved to California for college to attend USC "because of the weather."

His only prior journalism experience was as a 10-year-old, when he would listen to the BBC World News on a short-wave radio and summarize the stories for a "newspaper" he published himself.

As a college student he had his sights set on a career in computer programming, a skill he had taught himself and figured he could polish on his own. But he knew that a degree - any degree - was necessary, so he decided to major in something fun: communications.

"I knew I needed that piece of paper," he said. "I thought about the film school, but I decided it was too serious."

Richardson was less than serious about a lot of things in college, taking classes in subjects like global hip-hop culture and spending most of his weekends water skiing. He worked as a programmer at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory and delayed graduating for a year because he lacked just one foreign-language class.

"At least I'm good at English," he said.

He moved downtown in 2004 and married his high-school sweetheart, Kathy, in 2006. To Richardson, the area always felt like home.

"That's something I connected with downtown - it feels like a small town," he said. "You walk down the street and you see people you know."

Two more events in Richardson's post-college life solidified his ties to downtown.

First, he changed jobs to work for an online map company, allowing him to eliminate his commute by working near his home. Second, he was elected to the Downtown Los Angeles Neighborhood Council.

Like many of the most important things in his life, he didn't plan it.

"It was sort of by accident," he said. "The person who was supposed to be the candidate ended up not showing up, and the next thing I knew, I had a form in front of me for the 'area-wide resident artist' position."

The council became his introduction to all things downtown, and he stayed on the board for three years.

One of Richardson's most memorable battles from those days was the effort to stop a contra-flow traffic lane on Spring St. It resonated with his inner "transportation geek," and he continued in a similar vein, later pushing to expand bike racks and public transportation.

Blog Downtown started in 2004 as a way for Richardson to document issues he worked on and changes he witnessed.

"It sort of became an ever more time-consuming hobby," he said. "I'm fascinated by downtown, and I like having no idea what I'm going to end up doing. There was one day last year where I wrote about an opera, a press conference and a steel industry event in one day."

Since he decided to commit himself to the site full-time last year, Richardson has been toiling for no pay. He and his wife live off her teacher salary, which he hopes won't be the case for much longer.

"She's been very patient," he said. "I wish it could have been an easier road, but that's the state of the industry. Nobody knows how to make money right now."

Aside from being a poster child for new journalism, Richardson also represents the new downtowner - young, bright, creative and dedicated to pursuits that aren't exactly profitable.

"You've got a lot of artists and designers down here," he said. "For people like that, it's tough out there."

The idea of a downtown resident was practically nonexistent just 10 years ago. Back then, the area was full of deserted blocks, crime and homelessness, and it had practically no establishments open after 6 p.m.

"When I first moved downtown, if we wanted to get food late at night, there was Pete's Cafe," he said. "The food was OK, it was slow, but it was the only thing open, so we went there."

After the freeway system developed, offices migrated into skyscrapers closer to the 101, leaving a carpet of squat historic buildings in their wake. As developers began gutting the empty buildings in the '90s and filling them with sleek live-work units, the area saw an influx of new residents.

Like pioneers in a new territory, they rely on each other for business, friendship and, in Richardson's case, news.

"We've got all these cool creative people, and being a community downtown, people are able to create partnerships that they wouldn't have otherwise," he said.

As the downtown population grows, the neighborhood's identity continues to shift, and Blog Downtown hopes to track it.

"People come to L.A. to reinvent themselves, and so the identity of downtown never took hold because people kept wanting to change it," Fuentes said. "It's like a convenient girlfriend that you don't really want to commit to."

The future of Blog Downtown is as open as that of downtown itself. In December Richardson is hoping to add corporate sponsorships from local businesses to create an NPR-style nonprofit business model.

"This is something that downtown needs, and we need downtown to support this," Richardson said.

Though his readers see him as the leading downtown breaking news site, Richardson still faces the occasional struggle to gain acceptance as a legitimate news source.

The Los Angeles Police Department doesn't issue press credentials to online news sites, leaving Richardson without access to one of the central institutions in the very heart of his beat.

"LAPD has given us all this struggle, but at the same time the Sheriff's department has been great about it," he said. "You'd be surprised by who treats you as a journalist and who doesn't."

It doesn't seem to rub Richardson that he is sometimes treated differently than certain legacy media in the heart of his beat. He has no plans to become a substitute for, or even a competitor with, the L.A. Times, but rather hopes to complement it by serving a burgeoning new neighborhood.

"What we do is very on-the-ground and very interactive," Richardson said. "We want to encourage people to have a conversation. We want to be a forum for downtown to figure out what it believes."

For now, Richardson is intent on making the site sustainable. Five years and 3,400 stories since Blog Downtown first began, Richardson said the time for the site to succeed is now or never.

"If we're not able to make a go of this...man, we've put a lot of time into it," he said. "I mean, it's been great, but I sure hope we can make this work."