introducing networked journalism

August 18, 2006 8:50 AM

Esposing Earmarks: networked journalism's first assignment. Today marks a key moment in the evolution of the Web as a reporting medium. The first left-right-center coalition of bloggers, activists, non-profits, citizens and journalists to investigate a story of national import: Congressional earmarks and those who sponsor and benefit from them. Join the hunt!
posted by scalefree (9 comments total)

Fun. One of the first on the list is from New York, NY for $3mil to the City College of New York for the establishment of the Charles P. Rangel School of Public Service.

I'm going to make a wild guess as to who was responsible for that one.
posted by fet at 9:05 AM on August 18, 2006

esposing?

*head asplodes*
posted by quonsar at 9:12 AM on August 18, 2006

I was in a hurry but I swear I spellchecked it. I guess it doesn't check the headlines.
posted by scalefree at 9:22 AM on August 18, 2006

Is there such a thing as a useful and appropriate earmark? I keep seeing crusades against them, but one might think funds earmarked for a new highway in a growing area would be useful, as opposed to something like oh, I dont know, a bridge to nowhere?
posted by SirOmega at 9:40 AM on August 18, 2006

Whee! Let's go find us waste that accounts for less than 5% of the annual discretionary budget!

Earmarks are such a boogeyman. Sure, there's some that are pretty frivolous like corn museums or what have you, but a good number of them bring cultural or structural improvements to districts that would never get passed otherwise (not because they wouldn't be passed, but because there's only so much time to debate and vote on bills). Meanwhile we ignore the real elephant in the room - the rampant waste and corruption in the defense budget.
posted by shawnj at 10:09 AM on August 18, 2006

And the list of earmarks they have on their site? We spend more in Iraq in three days than the entirety of that spreadsheet.
posted by shawnj at 10:20 AM on August 18, 2006

I'm looking at Los Angeles in the earmarks map and all the earmarks are for education/re-training centers and hospitals and none are for more than one million dollars.
posted by euphorb at 11:04 AM on August 18, 2006

You know, the fact that you misspelled the headline kind of says it all about this networked journalism pish-posh.
posted by keswick at 11:04 AM on August 18, 2006

Rosen is great and the idea is too, but earmarks???

I don't get why, and i can't see it actually becoming big news. Waxman does stuff like this as a regular part of his job and never gets enough press as it is.
posted by amberglow at 5:18 PM on August 18, 2006