ABSTRACT
In June 2007, Norfolk’s Virginian-Pilot newspaper began an effort to incorporate citizens’ voices into its printed pages with “Co-Pilot,” a page that appeared in the paper’s front section three times a week (see Figure 7.1). Billed as an area where “you pilot the Pilot,” on the day the page was introduced reader editor Marian Anderfuren wrote that it “provides many avenues for your participation, from writing a personal essay to sharing newsy photos to covering events.” She cautioned “this isn’t a soapbox or a place to grind an ax,” since Co-Pilot was a vehicle for “sharing and connecting” (Anderfuren, 2007). Co-Pilot arose from discussions between Anderfuren and Virginian-Pilot management in early 2006, conversations that centered on finding ways to integrate more citizen perspectives within the newspaper. In fact, the Pilot had some institutional knowledge concerning citizen-engaged efforts; the paper had been an early proponent of public journalism in the 1990s (Charity, 1995). By 2006, however, renewed conversations about citizen stories in the paper’s pages took on added momentum. The paper was working on a re design that would offer the Pilot a page where “we can ask readers to cover things that we don’t get to,” said Anderfuren (personal communication, July 30, 2008). By November 2006, the paper sent Anderfuren to Spain to see how the newspaper El Correo used its daily citizen-contribution page Enlace (or “Link”). She noted how that section had communicated readers’ knowledge and experiences, especially through opinion pieces and photos that sparked community discussion within Enlace. By the middle of 2007, the Pilot’s redesign was finished and Publisher Bruce Bradley committed to the Co-Pilot experiment for one year. The first page appeared on June 6, 2007. However, by mutual agreement, Anderfuren and Bradley terminated CoPilot on March 24, 2008. Designed with reader contributions in mind, Anderfuren indicated that Co-Pilot folded before that one-year commitment was up due to a lack of quality submissions (personal communication, July 30, 2008).
