June 10, 2011
NY Times to crowdsource reporting on Palin emails
When 24,000 Sarah Palin emails are released this afternoon at 1 p.m. Eastern, news organizations will not only have teams of reporters sifting them for news and database specialists posting them online - outlets like the New York Times also hope for the help of hordes of readers to scour the massive data source.
The Times is asking its users to help “identify interesting and newsworthy e-mails, people and events that we may want to highlight.” No form has yet been posted on its web site, but the news outlet said it would be a simple one to allow readers to describe the nature of the email and then to share their own name and email addresses so they can get credit for their findings.
At the same time MSNBC.com said it was partnering with ProPublica, Mother Jones magazine and research firm Crivella West to scan and publish an online archive of the correspondence, similar to the one it created for a collection of emails from Palin’s husband Todd.
The crowdsourced document review technique has been used before: In 2007, TPM asked users to help sift a several-thousand-page Department of Justice report on attorney general firings; in 2008, Sunlight Foundation’s Earmark Watch Project had users ID hundreds of congressional spending earmarks, and the Dallas Morning News asked users to help examine lost JFK files, and in 2009, the British news outlet The Guardian launched a user investigation into a Parliamentary scandal involving expense accounts, eventually getting more than 28,000 of them to review over 220,000 documents (more on that experiment from Nieman Journalism Lab).
Watch the Times “Caucus” blog for updates when the records are released later today.
UPDTE: The Times database of emails and crowdsourcing form can now be found here.
UPDATE: The Washington Post is also seeking user help in analyzing the Palin emails, but only after it had limited its call for assistance to just 100 individuals working collaboratively in small teams.
UPDATE: Nice roundup from Associated Press on how Palin’s emails let old media test new media methods.
The News for Digital Journalists blog is made possible by a grant to USC Annenberg from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation.
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Tags: crowdsourcing, palin, database, guardian, ny times
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