On Innovation

Next Tuesday at 8 p.m. ET, The Washington Post and Bloomberg will hold the first Republican presidential debate to focus on a single issue: the economy.

The candidates will assemble at Dartmouth to talk social security, the national debt, health care, taxes and jobs. They will repeat well-rehearsed talking points, try to zing their opponents, and convince voters that their proposals qualify them to win the White House. 

But these debates generally contain few surprises. The candidate who can keep to their talking points without tripping over questions tends to “win.” But what about what the candidates don’t say? What about larger political questions that go unaddressed? What about fact-checking?

As we get geared up for Tuesday’s debate, we are partnering with Quora to get help tackling the questions that might otherwise go unanswered, starting off with Wonkblog’s Ezra Klein.

poptech:

Esri mashes up Ushahidi reports with other social media related to the recent events in Japan. 

Translated version found here. 

The L.A. Times has launched a guide to California public records, citing public interest in documents related to last summer’s corruption scandal in Bell, Calif. The site is essentially a reporter’s handbook on basic government reporting, with detailed explainers on covering public meetings, interpreting financial disclosures and accessing documents. 

Times journalists Shelby Grad and Sam Allen offered this introduction and invitation for public participation:

Since the public corruption scandal broke last summer in the city of Bell, hundreds of readers have voiced con cerns to The Times about potential problems at the government agencies in their communit­ies. The Times encourages read ers to share government records you consider news worthy or interesting. Send us documents and a Times staffer will review them and post them to this site, which also includes files obtained by our reporters.

Nonprofit news organizations have been leading the charge in collaborative accountability journalism, with sites like ProPublica publishing “reporting recipes” inviting reader participation in their investigations.

But mainstream news organizations have been slower to adopt such crowd-sourcing tactics. What other news sites are inviting their readers into the reporting process in creative and productive ways?

Amanda Zamora / Social media and engagement editor