The Washington Post and The New York Times "crowdsourcing" the stash Sarah Palin's gubernatorial e-mails is wildly controversial, but here is the "hot topic" the Post ombudsman is tackling instead today in the paper: "Is women's sports coverage lacking?" As if that can't be addressed in another week? New Post ombudsman Patrick Pexton did explore the rush to judge Palin's pile in an "Omblog" posting:
Sarah Palin and her e-mails are just too darn irresistible. The day began with an announcement on The Fix that The Post was looking for 100 readers to work in teams to sift through the former Alaska governor’s 24,000 emails, scheduled to be released Friday in Juneau.
The move was clearly an effort at crowd sourcing, the technique of enlisting the help of readers who may know more than journalists do about Alaska and Palin to make sense of the e-mails. And it was an “interactivity play”to get as many readers as possible to be engaged with The Post, particularly online, in a potentially major story.
But then the reality of Palin-mania set in. First of all, it didn’t take long for 100 people to sign up, and far more were waiting in line. The Post was trying to screen volunteers for knowledge, ability and political bias, but quickly got overwhelmed by the volume.
And then the New York Times on its political blog, The Caucus, about two and a half hours later put out its own crowd-sourcing call, more open-ended, saying anyone could sign up and comment on or analyze a particular Palin e-mail.
So The Post changed course later in the afternoon. Interactivity Editor Hal Straus said in an interview that upon reflection and in light of the huge interest, The Post would make its crowd call more open.
The updated call-out went up around 6 p.m. with this language: “We’ll share your comments with our reporters and may use facts or related material you suggest to annotate the documents displayed on The Post site. We may contact you for further details, by way of your registered e-mail with the Post, unless you specify otherwise in the comments.”
Said Straus: “The idea of using a closed group is not what we want to do. We would have to say ‘no’ to people. We don’t want there to be any perception that we’re limiting users from telling us what is going on. There is so much interest in this.”
Originally, Straus said, The Post was going to put the 100 volunteers in groups of 10, with each member reading the same segment of Palin e-mails. That way, it wouldn’t be just one person’s view, but potentially 10. The Post had also developed a script to ask the volunteers what they thought of Palin, whether they worked or had worked for any political campaign of any party and whether they had special knowledge of Alaska or the former governor. The goal was to screen out bias and screen in expertise.
But that proved unworkable with the waterfall of interest. And The Post went to Plan B.
At least Pexton then pointed out that conservatives thought this reeked of a liberal anti-Palin agenda. But why didn't this controversy make it into the Sunday paper?
In a Friday Q&A, Chris Cillizza was asked about it by a questioner who said it looked like "shoddy journalism." He replied:
Lots of people wondering about this.
I am a firm believer in crowdsourcing -- essentially using the hive mind of the web to surface the best information on a given topic.
We at the Fix have done it repeatedly over the last few years. We asked our community to help us choose the best state blogs, the best state-based reporters, the best political Tweeters etc.
I have been amazed each time at how much good information comes out -- stuff I had never heard of or thought about.
I think that was the same thinking behind the Palin emails crowdsourcing. The challenge is gargantuan -- sorting through more than 20,000 emails from the former Alaska governor.
As for those who say that it's not newsworthy what's in the emails, I would say only this: Palin has made clear she is thinking about running for president in 2012 and most polling I have seen puts her in first or second place in national polls on the 2012 contest.
Given that and the fact that Palin's time as governor is the best way to find out how she would govern and the approach she takes to office, it's hard to see how we (or any news organization) should not look through the emails to see what they tell us about her.
But no one is saying a news organization shouldn't look throught the e-mails. They're saying it's odd that you would hire a "crowd" of non-professionals (and you know how haughty they are about being professionals) to page through them.
