The Marcus Brauchli regime at the Washington Post took power last September. Yet it took nearly 10 months for the new regime to really plot out a different course for this storied institution, and that course involves having Post readers send in videos of their pets doing tricks. Sound a bit familiar?

Now if they could just figure out how to marry this feature with the new weddings reporter—-solvency city!

After jump, check out top Post editor Raju Narisetti‘s ambitions for the pet photo contest!

Memo from Narisetti:

Today we launched a new user-generated video contest, “Best Pet Tricks,” from Hal Straus’s Interactivity team: www.washingtonpost.com/pet-tricks. Through July 7, we’ll accept videos up to 90 seconds long of viewers’ performing pets. Readers can upload their videos via a simple submission form put together by the Infrastructure and Tools teams.

The kickoff was featured in today’s KidsPost, and will be promoted there and in the Home section as well as through our Facebook and Twitter feeds. A panel of celebrity judges including our own Liz Kelly of Celebritology will pick the best twelve videos, and viewers will choose the winner, which will be announced on July 31.

Congratulations to the Interactivity team and all involved on this fun, engaging activity for readers this summer.

Photo courtesy of ManWomanGradyBaby, Creative Commons Attribution.