A "A Night at the Opera” is one of The Bay Citizen's first experiments in "Citizen Journalism."

Part of The Bay Citizen’s mission to build and engage in the community around us. As part of this mission we teamed up with the San Francisco Opera to be their “online media sponsor” for “Opera in the Ballpark,” which is happening on Friday.

CLICK HERE FOR COMPLETE “A Night at the Opera”

Here’s the deal: as online media sponsor, The Bay Citizen agreed to put together a group of citizen journalists to do a behind-the-scenes look at a night at the opera. In return, the SF Opera is featuring The Bay Citizen in its promotional material and at the ballpark. (If you go on Friday, look for our logo on the giant TV screen!)

Now, this sort of arrangement isn’t kosher in the traditional, professional journalism world.

But the emerging world of community journalism is a different beast. It’s nearly impossible for a citizen journalist to get access to a place like the opera house. But this kind of experience can be of great benefit to anyone interested in journalism, and help build the community ties that can make citizen journalism an important force. Our idea was to put together a reporting event that both fosters and features citizen journalism.

With the exception of myself, The Bay Citizen’s community editor, no members of The Bay Citizen’s reporting staff were at the opera that night. We did bring in a professional freelance photographer, Russel Daniels, to work alongside our two citizen journalists, Thalia Gigerenzer and Mike Melero.

We hadn't  planned to include a professional photographer like Russel, but last-minute changes made it necessary. And Russel’s participation was a success in unexpected ways.

“It was great to work with a more experienced photojournalists like Russel,” says Thalia, who is also a volunteer intern at The Bay Citizen. “He taught me some camera tricks and he was so fast, he kept me on my toes.”

Looking at the completed project, it’s also great to feature the work of a talented Bay Area photographer like Russel, who says he doesn’t always get such creative assignments.

Again, “A Night at the Opera” is an experiment — a community experiment — so let us know what you think of the idea and the results.

--Queena Kim, Community Editor