The Chicago Tribune last month threw its hat into the citizen journalism ring as it launched TribLocal, an online publishing venture using software from Kodak and Advanced Technical Solutions Inc.

The newspaper’s (Monday-Friday, 576,132; Saturday, 501,324; Sunday, 937,907) pilot program consists of two new Web sites covering nine Chicago suburban communities.

“Once registered, users will be able to read and submit news stories and photos similar to other citizen journalism sites,” said Ted Biedron, president of Chicagoland Publishing Co., a subsidiary of the Chicago Tribune.

Ted Biedron

The first cluster of communities covered in the project include St. Charles, Batavia, Geneva, Elburn and Maple Park. The second consists of Orland Park, Orland Hills, Tinley Park and Homer Glen. The towns included are just a handful of the scores of suburbs in the Chicagoland area.

“The entire Chicago area contains 170-plus suburbs so with any project of this nature you’ll have to make sure you are scalable,” Biedron said.

The content on the sites is a mixture of news stories generated from TribLocal journalists as well as local residents. Two professional journalists and one sales rep will cover each cluster.

Online and print

For now, TribLocal will be an online-only venture. But Biedron said the Tribune plans to print microzoned tab editions once the TribLocal sites gain traction. Each edition will encompass about 12,000 to 15,000 copies and be produced by third-party printers.

The tabs will be delivered to home subscribers and available with single copies, he said.

The Tribune started exploring the idea of launching a citizen journalism program last spring, working with vendor mWave, which ATS acquired earlier this year.

“Last year we chose mWave, they were the original vendor and we felt they had an opportunity to create something unique,” he said.

The Tribune is the first newspaper to be using Kodak’s new Microzone Publishing Solution, which includes software that lets newspapers manage citizen journalism Web sites and associated print products.

“We worked together to develop the citizen journalism portal and TribLocal will be the first newspaper to use the new software,” he said. “There’s a lot of underlying technology that enables the site to post online quickly and efficiently.”

Kodak signed an agreement with ATS to jointly sell and support the microzone publishing software.

Kodak, ATS teaming up for venture

“We have a very tight go-to-market partnership that will see both Kodak and ATS sales people promoting and selling the Microzone solution in the industry,” said ATS New Media Group Business Development Director David Monks.

Kodak’s MPS consists of three products, Citizen Journalism, Advertising and Microzone Management.

“We think of it as a multichannel publishing system, enabling newspaper publishers to produce relevant content on the Web as well as in print,” said Monks.

Monks said the MPS’ core is the management app, which lets newspaper publishers assemble content, edit copy, format pages and publish output for print and online versions.

“It will enable publishers to have as many portals as they want,” he said. “They can target as finely as they want to their readership. It may not even be a community, it might be a specialty organization, but the portal will be configured according to those demographics.”

Monks said MPS’ features would let publishers reduce the amount of oversight needed to manage the community sites, although he doubts most publishers would relinquish control.

“My guess is that most newspaper publishers will not want to do that. They will have an editorial staff that will check the stories being published,” he said. “The solution we are delivering provides some substantial tools and automation features that enable publishers to do a number of tasks as they determine what should and shouldn’t be published.”

The Citizen Journalism app lets users submit stories, photographs and community listing events while the ad management module allows advertisers to oversee how they place, and pay for, ads slated for both online and print.

Paul Lynch, the Tribune’s senior manager of quality and commercial print, said the paper received positive feedback from communities in the TribLocal area as well as inquires from neighboring communities asking when their sites are going up.

“Without a doubt we’ll be adding to the list of communities,” he said. “Local advertisers have begun to fill our ad inventory, something that bodes well for this new publishing model. The Kodak reverse publishing module will let us deliver narrowly targeted print products economically.”