Sunlight Foundation wins blog award

Posted by Martin Stabe on 13 November 2006 at 12:08
Tags: Blogs, Journalism, Networked Journalism

One of the sites behind the networked journalism effort to cover the earmark budget appropriations of US members of Congress has won the top prize in the annual international blog awards presented by German international broadcaster Deutsche Welle.

The Sunlight Foundation, which Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger recently cited as an example of how journalism might develop in the next decade, won the at the top prize at the 2006 Deutsche Welle International Weblog Awards, or BOBs.

The BOBs jury picked winners in 15 categories, chosing from 5,500 nominated blogs.
Rafat Ali’s digital media business site PaidContent.org won award for Best English Weblog.

Two Persian-language blogs, — photo blog Kosoof and Hamed Mottaghis’ Weblog Tanine Sokut — shared the top prize in the Reporters Without Borders category.

Networked journalism: distributed FoI requests

Posted by Martin Stabe on 11 November 2006 at 13:02
Tags: Freedom of Information, Journalism, Networked Journalism

The Guardian’s “Bad Science” columnist, Ben Goldacre, is attempting a small experiment in distributed investigative journalism. Having had a Freedom of Information Act to Durham County Council rebuffed on cost grounds, he is calling on his readers to obtain the data piecemeal through lots of smaller, individual requests.

It’s a nice idea, especially since the government plans to make it easier to reject journalists’ FoI requests on cost grounds.

There’s just one small problem: The Government anticipated this tactic when preparing the legislation. Section (12)(4)(b) of the Freedom of Information Act allows public bodies to treat multiple requests that are made “by different persons who appear to the public authority to be acting in concert or in pursuance of a campaign” as though they were a single request. I fear, therefore, that the avalanche of requests the column is likely to generate will be rejected in much the same way as Goldacre’s original request.
Let’s hope nobody at Durham County Council read Goldacre’s column before the requests start pouring in!

The case also nicely illustrates the danger of the government’s proposals to change the FOI fees regime. If the government has its way, the power to aggregate requests in this way would be extended to multiple requests o on multiple topics made by people from the same organisation, making it much easier to reject requests on cost grounds.
The same exemption that I suspect will scupper Goldacre’s plan could in future be used to prevent all the reporters at the Northern Echo from using the FOIA to ask questions of Durham Council more than once or twice a quarter.

3 comments

US regional paper tries networked journalism

Posted by Martin Stabe on 5 October 2006 at 13:09
Tags: Journalism, Networked Journalism

Dan Gillmor of the Center for Citizen Media points out an effort by the Indianapolis Star to get its readers’ help in reporting stories.

Star columnist Dennis Ryerson explains:

Traditionally, reporters go to official sources and spend a lot of time digging out public documents to prepare news stories. We spend hours searching for people who may be affected by the decisions of school officials, city leaders, and others whose work affects our lives.

One thing we haven’t done much of is this: Ask.

We rarely if ever ask for the public’s help when we research an important issue [...]

Why? In part, because the highly competitive nature of our business — we want to be first with the most — makes us reluctant to tip off our TV, weekly print and online competitors to what we are doing.

And in part, it may be because of professional arrogance. We know what we are doing and we don’t need your help, thank you very little.

That has to change. Readers have a great deal of information and experiences and we’d like them to share those things with us. So in the future, we will be more open about asking for your help.

The Star calls it “crowd sourcing”, but if done well it could also become an example of the “networked journalism” that Jeff Jarvis has been advocating — the non-adverserial collaboration between professional and amateur reporters.