This press release came in from RVANews:

Wed., Oct. 31, 2007: PharrOut, LLC announced the release of RVANews.com today. In an effort to provide relevant and timely information to the Richmond community, the site merges aggregated news from local community blogs with original content written by RVA columnists and freelance writers.

RVANews.com highlights the individual posts of greatest interest, as selected by the editors of the community blogs. Some of the independently owned and operated community blogs currently represented on the site are:

• Carver & Jackson Ward News
• Chesterfield Daily
• Church Hill People’s News
• The Fan District Hub
• Hills and Heights
• Near West End News
• North Richmond News
• Oregon Hill
• Petersburg People’s News
• West of the Boulevard News
• River District News

“With the advent of so many fine, young community blogs, we thought it was time to really turn this mother out,” said PharrOut cofounder, Ross Catrow.

And, so far the wags of the local blogosphere wags are singing RVANews’ praises in harmony:

At je ne sais pas, John Murden said, “…Ross Catrow (of RVA Blogs) has pulled together the info from the neighborhood blogs into the new RVA News. That is pretty freakin’ cool.”

At River City Rapids publisher Jon Baliles posted “Two New Very Cool Blogs.”

Jason Kenney at J’s Notes posted “Richmond Blogosphere Keeps Rockin’”