Triblocal.com has a staff of four journalists, but will remain mostly self-policing, allowing citizens to determine what is newsworthy. The site currently targets nine separate towns, each with their own home page on Triblocal. The Tribune hopes for expansion.

In embracing multimedia convergence, the Tribune plans to “reverse-publish” the best content from the site, compiling the best pieces into a weekly tabloid to be delivered with the Tribune.

"This started with the question of how can we make the paper more relevant to readers who continue to live further and further away from the center city," said Ted Biedron, president of the Tribune division that created the site.

Tribune modeled the site on Denver’s YourHub.com, produced by the Rocky Mountain News. John Temple, the paper's editor, said that though sometimes news on YourHub doesn’t quite stack up journalistically, it can prove interesting, and it is important for newspapers to experiment in the current market.

"This is primitive, and it's not where it ends up, perhaps," he added. "But for a paper like the Chicago Tribune to open the door for anybody to participate is a very big step."

Source: Chicago Tribune through I Want Media