


	Ifra XMA Cross Media Awards Projects





	Company: Agora SA
	Project name: Citizen journalism project: I care

	General information about the publication

	Metro is the largest nationwide free daily newspaper in Poland with an average daily circulation of 519 thousand copies. It is also the third best read paper in a country (4,5 % daily reach). Metro is distributed throughout 19 largest cities. It is published by a multimedia group Agora which publishes also a quality daily Gazeta Wyborcza, 10+ magazines, runs a leading internet portal Gazeta.pl, radio stations and outdoor advertising business.

	Project description

	Metro boosted citizen journalism by letting readers share their engagement in charities and communities.

	The basic idea of our project

	Metro allowed the most active readers to write and edit a real issue of the newspaper - to create the paper they really want to read.

	Used Media Channels


	Newspaper		Event(s)

	Mobile Services		Online

The Implementation

In summer 2006 Metro launched an editorial campaign ”I care” focused on showing people who care about their communities, who try to change the world for better.
For three weeks they had a full page on stories submitted by readers, an internet blog. Readers could comment on those projects in internet and mobile text message polls.
Ten readers who were engaged in the most interesting projects were invited to edit one real issue of Metro. They could write stories, assign topics to journalists, edit the paper with a help of Metro's staff.

Image(s)

01-ReadersPaper-CoverPage.jpg (111 KB)

02-ReadersPaper-AmateurTeam.jpg (120 KB)

03-ReadersPaper-ReadersStor.jpg (102 KB)

04-ReadersPaper-InternetEdi.jpg (136 KB)

05-ReadersPaper-OnlineBanne.jpg (92 KB)

Project results

Hundreds of readers submitted their stories. 17 thousand unique readers logged in to its website.
Metro published the first daily newspaper created by readers for other readers. It gave it a publicity boost and improved readers' engagement to the brand.
The whole project was also used by Metro's team to research the market - learn more about their readers and topics they care about, to meet them personally.
After this project Metro invites readers to its weekly editorial meetings to discuss the past week's coverage and plan the paper for the following week.