Non-Profits Launch New Investigative Reporting Tool for Citizen Journalists

A couple of Washington, DC non-profit groups have launched a new investigative reporting tool to enable citizen journalists to pore through and report on gratuitous funding requests through Congress' annual appropriations bills.

The Sunlight Foundation and Taxpayers for Common Sense have launched Earmarkwatch.org, which is an online tool that enables constituents to "research, evaluate and comment on the pet projects favored and funded by their members of Congress," according to the two organizations.

The campaign '08 citizen journalism site OffTheBus.net has already posted a notice up on about the project. Its editors are asking citizen volunteers to look into appropriations requests by presidential candidates who are currently in Congress.

Think citizen journalism is just a fad? Check out today's Washington Post column by media critic Howard Kurtz. The column starts off with the story of how the Andrew Meyer – video got onto YouTube and CNN, and goes on to say that the trend of citizens providing the news media with video has exploded:

... Fox has received nearly 40,000 videos and pictures in six months under its uReport initiative. "There's something very raw and real about the pictures, because they're not highly produced," says Executive Producer
Suzanne Scott. "They really make the viewer feel they're at the story."
The only problem, she says, is that "spammers have figured out a way to use the uReport to send in their promos."

MSNBC's FirstPerson program has drawn 28,000 submissions since its launch in late April. "We have two-way conversations, so it's not just about us showing the news, but the community being able to share the news with us," says Gina Stikes, marketing director for MSNBC.com. "It really empowers us, and empowers them as well."

At CNN, the first cable network to launch such an effort 14 months ago, more than 60,000 videos and pictures have poured in from its
"I-Reporters." The most newsworthy have involved such events as a
Dallas factory fire and a New York steam pipe explosion. On the day of the Virginia Tech massacre in April, CNN paid for an exclusive deal with graduate student Jamal Albarghouti for the first shaky video taken during the shooting.

"Some folks in our industry look down their noses at it a little bit, and that's a huge mistake," says Sue Bunda, CNN's vice president for content development. "It's such a disregard for the value of our audience." She says she got the idea last year when she saw her teenage son's pride in a T-shirt from a video-sharing site – and says CNN now sends shirts to contributors whose material is aired.

Picture: Sunlight Foundation

See Also:

• Huffington Post Hires a Driver for OffTheBus