Getting alerts about any news in a certain locality usually does take some work for people to search and set the alerts if there is something available. Near-ly is just such kind of service that sends alerts to your twitter account through direct messages, and the news that is collected and sent as alerts, is only for 1000 feet around a particular location and restricted to the U.S. continent.

Near.ly sends you links to news and blog posts happening within 1000 feet of any address in the United States. nearlies are sent via Twitter direct message and look like this:
http://bit.ly/HYBQK via The Brooklyn Paper: Late Night Subway Mugging

If you are setting your location as New York, then the happenings and mentions about places 1000 feet around New York are covered, and you are sent all the alerts about them through direct messages. You won’t need to search for the news of a particular location.

You just need to register and set the alerts, from the website www.near.ly