What do you do when you have 3,000 pages of documents to go through to chase the latest development in a continuing story? Turn to the readers, of course. From Talking Points Memo:
Josh [Marshall] and I [Paul Kiel] were just discussing how in the world we are ever going to make our way through 3,000 pages when it hit us: we don’t have to. Our readers can help.
So here’s what we’re going to do. This comment thread will be our HQ for sorting through tonight’s document dump.
It’s the latest example of the effectiveness of what’s been called distributed reporting. They’ve set up a system where readers can go through the documents and add their findings to the comment thread. The post went up at 12:51 a.m. Eastern time; by 1:35 a.m. Eastern time there were 44 comments in the thread, ranging from single sentence notes to multiple screens of information.
One of the results, I’m going to predict, is that Talking Points Memo will continue to be ahead of legacy media on this story (the U.S. attorney firings). Engaging readers is old media; involving “readers” is new. And it works.
UPDATE: According to a post from Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo, roughly 24 hours after the initial request for reader help, the blog had drawn 628 comments.
TAGS: JOURNALISM, DISTRIBUTED REPORTING
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