HuffPost Crowdsources Senate Bill

In excess of 350 readers have helped the Huffington Post to plough through two versions of a bill designed to encourage economic recovery.

Due to the amount of material – a combined total of nearly 1,400 pages – HuffPost’s congressional correspondent decided to crowdsource the task of looking for noteworthy differences.

The volunteers were sent emails with instructions and a portion of the bill/s to look through, resulting in hundreds of tips sent to correspondent Ryan Grim via return emails and comments on the website.

Speaking to the Columbia Journalism Review (CJR), Grim said the HuffPost’s readership enables the execution of such strategies.

“We have readers who are highly intelligent, a lot of them are highly accomplished,” he stated.

Grim added that this form of crowdsourcing is in fact nothing new: “People have always called into newspapers or network news shows with tips - and that’s all this is.”

Visit CJR for the full article.

[HT – Editors Weblog]