About

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The Salida Citizen is a volunteer project by residents of Salida, Colorado to improve coverage of critical local issues, support smart decision-making, and facilitate positive communication between elected officials, City staff and concerned local citizens.

Credit goes to Bill Donavan for the original insight. The website took shape in conversations during and after the 2007 mayoral and city council races when a few of us heard repeatedly that, on the one hand, local citizens sometimes held opinions based on misinformation and, on the other, that the City could be doing a better job of communicating with its constituents. To us, these seemed like two sides of the same coin and we thought to address the problem with a website which emphasizes local coverage and encourages citizen participation. We are striving to be a bit more than a website, though. We take seriously David Gregory’s recent tweet: “people like me have to reach people where THEY are instead of asking them to come to me.” Stay tuned for more on this.

We are locals writing for locals. We write because we want to.

This also means that our coverage of local events will be incomplete and partial. We don’t claim to provide exhaustive coverage.

While we consider ourselves a bit more (or less) than an online newspaper, we embrace the definition of citizen journalism as described by Mark Glaser:

The idea behind citizen journalism is that people without professional journalism training can use the tools of modern technology and the global distribution of the Internet to create, augment or fact-check media on their own or in collaboration with others. For example, you might write about a city council meeting on your blog or in an online forum. Or you could fact-check a newspaper article from the mainstream media and point out factual errors or bias on your blog. Or you might snap a digital photo of a newsworthy event happening in your town and post it online. Or you might videotape a similar event and post it on a site such as YouTube.

We have been criticized for providing space for unedited articles, blog entries or discussion, knowing that they may propagate untruths. We acknowledge the criticism. First, we’re not removing any responsibility for accuracy so much as emphasizing that the responsibility belongs to the person writing the comment or article. Second, we feel that learning, by definition, begins at a point of lesser knowledge and this is an experiment in which all participants are learning in one way or another. Third, if errors are expressed online, they are most certainly being expressed offline.

To that end, though, we encourage our readers to be appropriately skeptical of the material they find here, especially in comments or forums. If you see something you know is incorrect, please post a correction.

We should also note that every other online media site we can think of encourages public comment of one sort or another, most of which is unmoderated. We’re not breaking new ground here.

We do hope that by providing better access to information we can elevate the level of discourse and make Salida and the Arkansas Valley a better place to live.

Opportunities

Get involved:

Start a discussion

Create a topic and start a discussion about local matters in our forums. You must create an account first.

Write a news article.

If you haven’t written an article for us before, please submit something for consideration via our email address. Include your name and phone number. Articles must have a local emphasis, adhere to journalistic standards for accuracy and objectivity and have fewer than 800 words. If external documents are referenced they should be included as links for the article. Article submissions may be edited for clarity or content (although they usually aren’t) and may be refused. Contact us first if you have any questions.

Add an event

A submission form is in the works, we promise, but for the moment, please just use our email address to notify us of calendar events. We’re actively working on our calendar to make it more useful for folks, and we appreciate hearing about local events which we haven’t yet added.

Send us a letter

Send us a letter to the editor via our email address. Letters to the Salida Citizen are normally published as written, although they may be edited for clarity or content. Please include your name, address and phone number (for verification). Anonymous letters will not be printed.

Upload a video

If you have a cool, interesting or funny video relevant to Salida or the Arkansas Valley, upload it to a video site like youtube or vimeo and send us the link. If we like it, we’ll add it to our video gallery.

Write for the Salida Citizen.

We can’t promise you fame, fortune or glory, but if you’re the type who thinks that the job is its own reward, we’d love to have you writing regularly for us. Drop us a line telling us a little about your interests and experience. Our editorial standards and style guidelines are required reading for anyone submitting text for publication.

Give us your feedback.

Have some good ideas? Constructive criticism? Let us know via our feedback form. We’d love to hear from you!