Valley PR Blog

Arizona Republic’s foray into citizen journalism

By Angelo Fernando on February 4th, 2008 In Media, Social Media

Not too long ago, I noticed a campaign in the Arizona Republic about “Newspaper. The Multi-medium” and wondered exactly how serious newspapers were about overturning/re-engineering a business model and entering this brave new world of ‘-tubes‘ and ‘-lists,’ ‘-pedias‘ and ‘-casts.‘

The visual (left) was of this weird, bot-like news consumer walking around with cables, antennae and a digital panel suspended in front of his face. “Today’s newspapers isn’t just about paper,” the copy went, “It’s an innovative multimedia experience that engages readers with news, opinions and advertising.” What was missing was mention of citizen journalism –news generated by these bot-like creatures, too.  Gannett last year declared it was going to be a platform-agnostic news and information company

So I was fully prepped when Paul Maryniak, General Manager of the Arizona Republic’s Southeast Valley section embraced citizen journalism last week, going on to say that the “malcontents” and critics were flat-out wrong.

“At The Republic, we call our citizen journalism News By You. I hope you consider it if you’re trying to publicize any number of good or worthy things that are happening in your life.”

Yes, he acknowledges there are limited resources. But the ability to feature reader-generated content allows the paper to feature stuff that even the pros could miss out, he says. Last month, senior editor Dan Shearer also acknowledged the trend, mentioning how a citizen reporter had been the first responder to report a local church fire.

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