After two years of work, the online newspaper Crosscut Seattle launched today. Founded by David Brewster, the founding editor of the Seattle Weekly and a former Seattle Times columnist, the site describes itself as "an online daily newspaper for the Pacific Northwest."

Brewster writes on the site that Crosscut is an answer to a gap in quality local news.

"Readers and advertisers were flowing to Web products, so let's stop lamenting about declines in certain kinds of journalism and get with the sunrise part of the news industry," he writes.

Armed with a clever slogan, "news of the great nearby," Crosscut's debut issue is a robust mix of local news that links heavily to the Seattle Times, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer and other newspapers. Readers are able to post comments to every story. There isn't a whole lot yet in terms of advertising, which is understandable at this point.

I broke the news about Brewster's venture last September in an article about online journalism. My guess is that Brewster is hoping to expand Crosscut to other cities in the future, depending on how Crosscut Seattle fares.