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.

When asked if he wanted help soliciting ideas and sources for his Night Lives column, Style reporter Dan Zak said, “This is entirely up to you guys. Go wild.”

Working with Katie Rogers on the social media team, we used Zak’s theme for a local summer series to ask our readers directly: “What goes on in Washington while we sleep?” Specifically, we were looking for ideas to help source a feature story each week for an entire summer. We mixed a Twitter call-out using the hashtag #DCNightLives and a Google form to accept submissions. Fast forward two months, and Zak has written a total of nine stories, three of which were sourced from our initial request for readers to help.

In an effort to highlight the people behind the numbers associated with the economic recession, The Washington Post is offering the longtime unemployed an opportunity to share their stories directly with readers.

“Help Wanted: Stories of Unemployment” is powered by six unemployment-affected families and produced by The Post’s Business section and Interactivity team. Throughout the summer of 2011, members of the families are posting their experiences as they struggle to pay the bill, preserve relationships and maintain hope for the future in Maryland, Virginia, Ohio, California, Oklahoma and Tennessee.

futurejournalismproject:

Crowdsourcing the Documentary, with Help from our Friends

Via Beet.tv:

Amr Salama, an Egyptian filmmaker and a central figure in creating the alternative media universe during the revolution in Egypt, is finishing a documentary about the historic events. 

Through an appeal on his Twitter account, he received 300 GB of camcorder and camera phone footage, he says in this interview with Beet.TV.  

(Source: futurejournalismproject)

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

By Whitney Shefte, Video Journalist, @whitneyshefte

Mashable’s community manager Vadim Lavrusik says that journalism has always been about filtering through content to show audiences what is important, but using social media to expand upon that content is what can bring storytelling to new heights. He says that Mashable’s staff are doing more of their own original reporting and they are utilizing their social media skills to tell better stories.

“I think that journalism at Mashable is really growing and maturing. It’s something that we’re trying to do more of and really train our staff how to effectively find sources, and really find sources using social. So things that they are already doing but how can they leverage the tools that they’re on in their reporting?” said Lavrusik.

In this video, Lavrusik talks about ways journalists can use social media to amplify their content and why building such a strong community base through resources like Facebook, Twitter and meet-up events has made Mashable so successful.