ProPublica's Reporting Network Spot-Checks First Wave of Stimulus Construction
BY Nancy Scola | Wednesday, August 19 2009
ProPublica's Reporting Network is the non-profit news group's nascent attempt to tap into the eyes and ears of interested amateurs. Or at least interested reporters not on ProPublica's payroll. We're keeping a close eye on the networks first major project, a "spot check" of stimulus-funded construction projects from California to New Jersey, Alaska to Texas. And we're doing that because unlike many citizen/pro-am/unfunded journalism projects, the three-month-young Reporting Network is doing something that otherwise couldn't be done. There's no way ProPublica staff assigned to the project -- which numbers more or less one, in the form of editor Amanda Michel -- could do a real reporter's work on the hundreds of project's in the spot check sample. It's making the impossible possible. Neat, no?
And unlike other citizen journalism experiments, ProPublica is asking its network of reporters to pull together mostly quantifiable details. That opens up the pool of potential participants, since it can take only a few minutes and a some basic research skills to play along.
ProPublica is now out with its first reporting on the on-the-ground progress of Recovery Act construction projects that, pulling from a sample of 520 of the 6,000 or so approved projects, finds that while construction is more or less on track, there's a wide disparity between how far along states are. (The margin of error between that sampling and national patterns, writes Michael, is 4.5 percent.) Cold weather states, for example, are rushing along mightily, while those short-winter states like Florida are being a pit pokier about breaking ground. Read that and other finding's in Michel's report. (Photo credit: Wayne National Forest)