Comments on: The Crowdsourcing Challenge: How Sites Are Handling The Sarah Palin E-Mails

By: mark simon

mark simon — Sat, 11 Jun 2011 20:25:17 +0000

Thanks Laura, it is interesting to see, and I do look forward to see where this will go. Your story was well read and I had a couple of folks email me on my comments. Both disagreed with my belief that there was not a public service in this effort.
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We are just opening in the US and reader feedback involvement is new for us, as in Hong Kong the laws/political scene are much different.
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I have become a big fan of paidcontent, as writing is solid and story picks good.
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thanks

By: Guest

Guest — Sat, 11 Jun 2011 14:39:06 +0000

Hey Mark, Thanks for bringing up the marketing angle of this, that is a really good point and one that I’d like to follow up on in another post. It’s interesting to see how the websites are promoting the e-mails (or not) and advertising the fact that they need “help” going through them. On some levels it’s a “stunt,” as you put it, but on the other hand, I hope we’ll be seeing a lot more of this–news organizations opening up primary documents for readers to analyze, and then using some of what the readers find in follow-up articles (and citing those readers). It’s marketing in a way, but it’s also just a smart response to the ways that reporting is changing. And it’s a great way to pull individual commenters into articles (including articles in the print form of these publications) without letting the articles devolve into a sort of messy and opinionated free-for-all like you see in the comments sections on websites.

I take your point that there’s a question about whether the Palin e-mails should be used as source material for this, but she’s an incredibly well-known public figure who’s been extremely active in social media herself, some of the e-mails are redacted and it honestly seems (to me!) like an ideal approach for this kind of thing. And if it turns out that nothing of much real substance is found in these e-mails, well, might as well give the readers the opportunity to see the source materials themselves. They may end up reading those e-mails and then agreeing with exactly what you wrote above.

It’s all interesting, huh? I’m going to continue to follow stories like this and watch for the ways that news orgs are enlisting reader help/support/reporting in the digital era, so please keep letting me know what you think and if you have ideas. laura @ paidcontent dot org

By: mark simon

mark simon — Sat, 11 Jun 2011 13:12:21 +0000

Laura, I am no Palin fan. But this is a marketing stunt, and one that is ill thought out. First of all 30,000 quarter page emails could be gone through by 5 reporters in two days. You make 250 pounds of paper sound large, that is just silly. This is not an overwhelming stash of documents.

Also, if after two days we find out the governor asked about a tanning bed, then whoa!!!!, lets go dig up that Truman treasure trove when he oversaw the White House remodel. The nerve of that guy with a bowling alley, steam room, movie theater, and get ready for this,, a dumb waiter. Again, I have been in at least ten Gov mansions and I know of state first ladies who spent more on new napkins than this tanning bed.

My real objection here is that the NYT, WASHPOST, and others are opening up a news effort to what no sane person thinks is anything but a circus for Palin haters. We put Sarah Palin in an animation pole dancing, and have negatively portrayed her in animations a dozen times. But that is satire.

I just don’t know what this is in terms of journalism, as bloggers and left wing activist groups will have access to these emails, so there is no public service in this “crowd lynching” approach. And the whole lets “get her” is a bit much.

You guys reported that NYT reporters complained that Bill Keller’s rants against Huffpost were causing them problems reporting on the tech/net sector. Wouldn’t one on a political beat worry about this? Or do they just not care.