The Sacramento Press is a hybrid site of professional and community-contributed journalism. One recent event that we could not cover in-house is a perfect example of how citizen journalism works best:

One of our reporters, Kathleen Haley, was unable to attend a debate scheduled for Thursday night.

Our editorial department e-mailed a resident Haley had met at another event who had shown interest in the debate. This resident suggested that a friend of hers, Chris Shannon, who had already planned to go to the debate, write about it for The Sacramento Press.

We asked our interns to see who was available, but none of them were to attend either.

Chris Shannon e-mailed us and called to confirm that he could cover the District 7 debate.

He took pictures and wrote a great story.

We are very lucky to have community members who are willing to write about events and issues that affect all of us. Our staff is very small and it's impossible to cover everything in our area.

Thank you, Chris Shannon, for the great coverage and we hope this example will encourage more writers to share stories on The Sacramento Press.