Newspapers the world over continue to adopt citizen journalism techniques to include the reader in the news process. One of the latest developments comes from Peru's daily, El Comercio, which has begun to integrate photographs from readers into its website and print edition. The Editors Weblog asked the paper's web editor, Juan Carlos Lujan, a few questions about the project in an email interview.

Why did El Comercio decide to open its pages to its readers? What does the paper expect reader participation to bring to the paper?

We are trying to create new relationships and new links with the audience in a new scenery where the abundance and proliferation of virtual communities and collaboration environments provide the opportunity for anyone to play the citizen journalism.

The advance of the technology (digital cameras and telephones) allows us to create new contents where the dialogue, conversation and collaboration are strategic issues to reach new audiences, especially young people.

We are in this business since 1996 and from the first day we understand that readers in Internet are always in permanent contact with the media, using the email and the forum. Three years ago we made a similar experience, but it did not work very well because in that time we were looking only information.

In those years the photography for the web was more difficult to process. Now the information era has new elements and photography is the best way to work and cooperate with the readers. They expect a lot from us and the Internet give us the opportunity to stay in the first line.

Today, thanks to the digital cameras and the cellular telephone, we can engage with the audience. Readers can help us to elaborate new issues in the information, especially facts that are interesting for the community.

As of now, you include photographs and videos from readers. Do you eventually plan to add original reporting? Do you have plans to add citizen material in print?

Yes, we have some plans. We think that the easiest way to begin this social experiment is with the photography. Then, we will continue with reports from some readers, but first we need to train this people and to know who they are and what they want.

I forgot to tell you that now we publish pictures from our web readers in the print edition. There is a page called La pagina del lector (The reader's page) where we show the most important picture from the week. And that is our most important advance in the last month.

What has been the reaction of your readership? Do you expect their participation to grow?

Sure, we think that they are very grateful by the citizen journalism. We listen to them and publish those issues that they would like to see in a newspaper. We receive about four or six photographs per day and now we have another project called "Celebrate de Saint Valentin Day with pixels" where people can send us their personal pictures to celebrate this special day.
(Check it out here)