I’m a little late to the game on this one, but the Guardian newspaper is asking its readers to help the newspaper examine the expense records of British MPs. If you’re wondering why MPs have had their expenses scrutinized, you can read more about the scandal here.
There are a couple things that are fascinating about this. The first, obviously, is that the newspaper is opening up its reporting to ordinary folks. By doing so, it’s essentially co-opting readers (with their permission, of course) to produce news and give them access to their conclusions.
It’s also interesting to me that they’re posting as they go and updating conclusions as they come in. This is a very Web-savvy thing to do, but it’s something that most newspapers might not think of. The traditional newspaper way to do this, of course, would be to find a spare conference room or corner of the newsroom, lock a couple reporters up with massive file boxes for six months, and publish some mammoth Sunday piece at the end. But the Guardian is basically admitting that 700,000 documents are way too many for the newsroom alone to analyze in a timely manner, and has decided to ride along with the breaking news wave.
There’s more on the topic here at David Eaves’ Open Source News blog. He rightly points out that by enlisting curious citizens to help, the Guardian is building brand loyalty with them by engaging them in a shared project. He doesn’t quite say this, but what I thought of was the idea that a sense of ownership can really increase a sense of commitment to an organization or a newspaper.
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