The New York Times is shutting down its experimental hyperlocal site for New Jersey after more than a year of seeking to cover three towns there with unpaid local residents.

'The Local' launched in March 2009, with a paid staffer overseeing the coverage of Maplewood, Millburn and South Orange, N.J. But in a post today, the site noted it would shutdown and its coverage would be taken over by Baristanet, a local non-Times site run out of Montclair, N.J.

“From the beginning, we described this as a pilot, a test, an experiment, because we knew that our path in community journalism couldn't be paved with sites staffed by full-time New York Times journalists," The Local noted in a statement today. “Nevertheless we were committed to pursuing the journalistic lessons to be found in Web-based community coverage, and made this an editorial priority.”

The site took a hit last fall when staffer Tina Kelley took a buyout and the paper chose to keep it going with contracted non-staffers.

A similar Times hyperlocal site in Brooklyn, N.Y., has also undergone changes and is now overseen by the City University of New York Graduate School of Journalism.