A couple of months ago, I joined Julius Vaughns on the Aurora section of YourHub.com. A couple of days after I joined the team, Julius and I sat down and discussed Aurora.

During that meeting, Julius told me that since he started at YourHub.com, he has wanted to take an in-depth look at the Town Center at Aurora, the former Aurora Mall.

He wanted to look at the changes that the mall management has put in place since a shooting that occurred there two years ago. He wanted to look at the curfew put in place by the mall, limiting the hours that kids under 16 could be there by themselves. And he wanted to know what other people thought about it.

'Why not?' I told myself.

What I didn't know was how many people actually cared about what was going on at their neighborhood shopping center.

Your involvement has been vitally important to how we've approached this story. We weren't allowed to conduct interviews in the mall, so we relied on your input to help us tell the story of the changes at the Town Center. We mixed our skills of journalism with your desire to tell your personal stories about the mall and produced a product that we can look to when considering future packages like this one.

We learned a lot about the mall's programs and how you as patrons react to change there.

The Parental Escort Program was just one aspect of what we looked at. From our first meeting with the mall management, we learned that the program doesn't like to be called a 'curfew'. We also learned that all of the people in the "Moms and Dads" program are actually mall employees. We figured out that only 40 (or 3.5 percent) of the nation's 1,130 malls have a program similar to the Town Center at Aurora's program.

We also heard from you about your concerns with the mall. Comments varied from personal stories about experiences at the mall to general feelings toward mall management, alleged discrimination at the mall and safety issues.

Some people's comments spurred more comments from the public. A few kids took time away from their homework and friends to let us know how they feel about mall issues.

We also heard from some people who told us that they would never set foot in the mall again. Other commentators told us that they elect to visit other malls, sometimes traveling long distances to avoid the Town Center at Aurora.

We have a few more of your comments on the Town Center at Aurora below. And while we feel like our part in this story is complete, you are more than welcome to keep voicing your opinion on the mall or just about any topic you want to discuss.

Citizen journalism is all about this sort of thing. We can't be in the community 24 hours a day, so your input into this paper is central to this new type of journalism. During the time we were working on this story, we learned a lot about this new journalism.

That's the great thing about it; not only do we get a chance to mold what we think it should look like, you get your say, too. That makes these newspapers more than just a one-way source of information - you can talk back to your news, too.