Posted on 06/09/2011 4:26:30 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
An unusual example of media efficiency. There’s a huge new supply available of her e-mails as governor and an eternally huge demand among Palin-hating liberals for new dirt on her. If you’re a cash-strapped editor, why not match one to the other and let the market do your work for you? Palin derangement is like the wind, or the sun: All the media has to do is harness it to provide a limitless supply of productivity.
Just think, if she runs for president, they might be able to outsource whole stories to their liberal readership instead of just document analysis. Then again, they’re basically doing that already.
More than 24,000 e-mail messages sent to and from Sarah Palin during her tenure as Alaska’s governor will be released Friday. Join The Post in digging through them. We are looking for 100 organized and diligent readers who will work alongside Post reporters to analyze, contextualize, and research the e-mails. Think of it as spending some time in our newsroom.
Our hope is that working together, we can efficiently find interesting information and extract new stories that will lead to further investigation. We don’t know what we’ll find, but we want you to be ready and open for the challenge.
The NYT is pulling the same stunt. Am I right to think that this is a novel experiment for major newspapers, one they’re coincidentally conducting on one of their favorite targets? Talking Points Memo used crowdsourcing effectively a few years ago to explore the U.S. Attorneys scandal, but I can’t think of an old-school paper doing a major document dump on its readers and treating it as some sort of joint investigative endeavor. I could be wrong; e-mail us if so and I’ll update. Even if I am, I’m amazed that they’d employ this for Palin, of all people, given the intense criticism it’s going to draw, especially since the Journal and other papers will be reviewing things the traditional way. I guess they figure, after three years of antagonism, why keep up any pretense?
Even so, crowdsourcing’s a smart, sleek information-gathering technique. Thanks to the Times and WaPo for legitimizing it for conservative media like Fox News, which will now happily put it to good use doing oppo research on the left. Exit question: Would you guys mind collating some Weiner stories from off the wires and leaving the links in the comments for me? I’m tired and want to watch TV. Thanks!
More here:
24,199 pages of Palin e-mails to be released Friday morning
By Bill Dedman
Investigative Reporter, msnbc.com
EXCERPT
The long-delayed release of public records in Alaska, 24,199 pages of emails sent between former Gov. Sarah Palin (and her husband) and state officials, will happen in Juneau at 9 a.m. Friday, the Alaska governor’s office announced Monday.
News organizations and citizens requested the emails under the state public records law back in 2008, when the relatively unknown Palin burst onto the national scene, and when it became known that she and her staff were using personal Yahoo accounts to conduct state business outside the usual reach of public records requests.
The records to be released include emails that went between the Yahoo accounts of Palin or her husband, Todd Palin, and about 50 top state officials. When one side of those email discussions passed through the state mail computers, it became a public record. (A legal challenge now in the state Supreme Court addresses the broader question of whether all the governor’s emails about state business, even if conducted between Yahoo accounts without passing through state computers, should also be considered a public record.)
Free public archive
Soon after the emails are released, msnbc.com plans to scan them and put them online in a public archive, restoring the electronic records to electronic form. This archive will be co-sponsored by Mother Jones magazine, which also requested the documents back in 2008, and with Pro Publica, the nonprofit investigative newsroom. A similar archive was created by msnbc.com for a smaller batch of Todd Palin emails last year. Those emails showed the vigorous role the “First Dude” played in the operation of state government. Here is that archive. In both cases the legal services company Crivella West volunteered its services.
CLICK ABOVE LINK FOR THE REST
I know due diligence in vetting presidential candidates is a necessary function...but I’m wondering if anything anywhere near this magnitude has ever happened before?
i spent more time investigating 0bama then the lamestream media did.
I am certain there will be significant research by Palin supporters to highlight those emails that demonstrate her political acuman, intellectual curiosity, moral courage and ethical convictions. It will not be a fair fight.
Easy prediction: here comes the bogus e-mail scandal, for which no one will be punished, and the MSM will report it as fact for days on end.
They can't help themselves.
In an update, the WaPo has now done a semi crawl back.
Said due to a very strong reaction, they will now only post certain Palin emails and then let their readers comment on them.
Of course we know these will not be very selective emails, hint, hint.
Whatever, but one thing we do know, conservatives fought back and at least scored a semi victory in this instance.
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