We're 125,000 Strong

Reflections from SusanG, a Daily Kos' editor and co-founder of ePluribus Media

Anna Haynes interviews SusanG over email, May 15-21.

When it comes to hands-on crowdsourced journalism, Susan Gardner - better known online as SusanG of Daily Kos - has seen and done it all. Her offhand invitation to the Daily Kos community to join in "useless speculation as to what this complicated crapola means" triggered the Daily Kos investigative avalanche (1,2,3,4) that exposed White House reporter "Jeff Gannon'"s career trajectory as "a modern-day fairy tale on steroids." She went on to co-found ePluribus Media, an organization for "citizen journalism, of the people, for the people," investigating propaganda, corruption, and other issues of public concern. Today, she's a contributing editor at Daily Kos.

Having lived crowdsourced journalism for years now, SusanG has a wealth of wisdom to impart. In this interview she talks about her experiences, why people do crowdsourced journalism, the movement's strengths and weaknesses, its relations to the traditional press, her thoughts on "partisanship" today, and more.

Anna Haynes: What do you think motivates contributors to participate in Daily Kos and ePluribus Media?

SusanG: Certainly not money. Part of it might be, in some cases, a desire to get a name for one's self in a pretty small pond. But mostly, I think it's a frustration with the media, which has served the country poorly during this administration. I know a lot of people feel a responsibility for getting to the truth of the matter. They no longer trust the media to do that. And I also think the fellowship that comes with collaboration in a country where many feel isolated and cut off from the truth is a motivation. There is something inherently ennobling about joining with others in a cause greater than just promoting the narrow interests of your life (and America is grounded in that tradition). I think it's also a revival of the notion of participatory democracy. Those who are gifted with analysis, research and interpretive skills feel they're giving something back to the country by exposing corruption. It's grounded in idealism, I think, that people have been embarrassed for a long time are putting themselves to a practical end: gathering information to make us all better citizens.

Q: Drawing on your Daily Kos and ePluribus Media experiences to shed light on the present, the pitfalls and the potential of crowdsourced journalism, what features of a crowdsourced journalism project make it likely to succeed?

A: A good collaborative software program ups the chance of success, with good search capabilities. Having a big enough pool of researchers, but a smaller crowd of actual skilled writers (doesn't necessarily have to be journalist types).

Q: ...And what's success?

A: Good question. There are several measures, I guess. One would be getting public officials to act on your findings (as ePluribus was able to do by having Louise Slaughter officially begin asking the White House about Jeff Gannon on our behalf). Another would be getting mainstream media to cover what we're covering, although this may be less important as more and more people flock to these citizen journalism sites as primary sources for news (as TPM's coverage of the US Attorney scandal surely has done, at least for that issue). Another measure might be how well an organization is able to get its stories driven into the larger blogosphere itself. As we're seeing the power of blogs grow, sometimes moving a story just that far is enough to get enough letters, calls, input to representatives asking for an investigation. And I guess a final measure of success is how informed the members themselves are, how gratifying they're finding their involvement. Even if a story doesn't break big, certainly there's some measure in success in having a few hundred people feel the satisfaction of having gotten to the bottom of something.

Q: How do you respond to criticisms that Daily Kos and ePluribus Media are just doing leftwing partisan journalism?

A: Epluribus Media is set up as a non-partisan organization. I think the initial impetus for setting up such an organization may be partisan in nature (or actually in reaction to one party's policies or actions). It was difficult in the case of ePluribus to even tease out the questions about partisanship since (to me, at least) it was set up in reaction to the overreach of power. Because the Republican Party controlled all branches of government, I think people were defining themselves as researching the abuse of power, which happened to be (at that time) attributable to the actions of the GOP.

Nearly all of the people drawn to the group came from an avowedly partisan blog. I can see how the idea of research -- to an observer -- may appear to be a partisan endeavor. But this also somewhat misunderstands the mission of the primary blog that membership was drawn from. Daily Kos, while certainly a blog focused on getting Democrats elected, has never been about getting any and all Democrats elected. It's about getting a certain type of Democrat elected -- ones who are transparent, responsive to constituents and willing to speak out and stand up for core beliefs. Both in the diaries there and on the front page, there has been criticism of Democrats. In just the past week, there has been strong disappointment expressed about the watering down of the ethics/lobbying bill by the Democratic majority, for example. And William Jefferson has been quite soundly criticized for his ethical lapses.

I cannot speak to how investigative work will play out in the long run for organizations formed in reaction to what certainly could be described as an environment inching toward one-party rule. My best guess is that as Democrats re-take and solidify some influence, close looks will be taken at any iffy connections or shenanigans as well. I know for myself, I feel a duty to police our own side of the fence at least as much (perhaps more so) than the other side. There is no gain for citizens if the same kind of establishment/lobbying/cronyism simply switches from people with an R after their names than a D.

Q: But won't there be a partisan bias stemming from what stories the group chooses to cover?

A: I think the "nonpartisan" as a goal is going to be played out within a specific story. But as to the choice of *what* is covered, I think it's probably going to be fruitless to expect pure non-partisanship in what a group chooses to investigate. Individual people are drawn to individual topics. And when you're working with a large group of people who don't do this for a living, it's going to be pretty hard to "assign" stuff in the traditional sense. I suspect people will gravitate toward looking into subjects that interest them, whether it's the DOJ or the environment or mine safety or whatever. These really are not (or should not) be partisan issues: they're more about how those in power, whatever their political party, are living up to their job of enforcement or creating policy in the public interest.

Q: What do you gain by having ePluribus Media separate from Daily Kos? What do you lose?

A: Well, first you have to understand that they're entirely different entities. Markos is the sole owner of Daily Kos. I was just a diarist there who stumbled across information that exploded into the Gannon story through joint research. He didn't even notice it was going on until long after it had made news across the blogosphere and even made it into the MSM. Ironically, his first front page notice about it was a link to Atrios, which was commenting on it, but was linking back to his own site. I don't think he even clicked the link Atrios was referencing, because it took him a while to notice it was about something breaking on his own site.

The limits of the Daily Kos set-up for research were apparent within a few days. People were loading scads of information into the comments of the diaries; diaries were spinning off from that (often because I asked people who found some information to look into it further). The search engine sucks and you couldn't search comments (IIRC). This really became apparent as a problem once the whole thing was over. In reviewing the diaries and comments in a kind of after-report, we actually found his real name and address had been provided in a very early diary by one smart commenter. But it was lost amidst hundreds of other names and addresses provided by other commenters. The most active researchers, some of whom were techies, suggested another, more friendly platform be created, so we moved over there. Then we still would post stories at the research site and cross-post them at Daily Kos.

Daily Kos thus became an outlet, while the ePluribus site (then called Propagannon) was the research hive.

Legally, ePluribus was set up by Brian Keeler and me as a 501c4. This had nothing to do with Daily Kos; Markos didn't have any role at all in it.

The obvious advantage to cross-posting at Daily Kos is that it's the biggest political blog in the world. But it simply isn't able to handle a massive collaborative research project as well. Perhaps smaller ones, very tightly focused, it can handle in a diary series with fewer pieces of information and researchers. But the scale we were thinking of for epluribus -- basically investigating all aspects of the right-wing machine? Not a chance.

Q: What advice would you offer to someone contemplating starting a crowdsourced journalism project?

A: Be very, very clear on who is responsible for what. One of the pitfalls can be the "commons" problem in which because there are so many people involved, you think someone else surely is already doing a task, making a phone call, etc. Things can drop through those commons cracks. Also, in my experience at ePluribus, there is a LOT of interest in the digging aspect. You end up with literally thousands of pieces of information, some of it going off on tangents that do indeed need to be looked into, but perhaps not right at that moment. Yet research will simply keep going on and on and on -- this person is on this board of directors, which also shares two members of boards at this OTHER company, which also has ties to THIS lobbyist ... and so on. There tends to be an inclination to continue researching until it develops into an overwhelming sprawl and with no intermittent narrative provided.

To avoid this, I'd recommend: stories as series, first, if it's complicated. Secondly, there seems to need to be a slot somewhere between the research arm and the narrative-writing arm. You don't run into this in traditional journalism, because usually the reporter IS the researcher (or at least is directing a single researcher). But when you end up spawning hundreds of pieces of information in a couple of hours on a subject, you need to have some sort of bridging person or persons between those two areas. Often the researchers are so excited about what they're finding out, they're reluctant to slow down and explain it in a way that helps a writer or writers make sense of it. If one or two people are committed to doing brief summaries (however inelegant ... they don't have to be writers) with links to evidence of what they're saying, it would be very, very helpful for those tasked with writing the end product.

EPluribus hadn't solved that when I left. Perhaps they have now.

Q: What about funding?

A: My own feeling is that the citizen journalism movement is probably going to move forward on a model of a couple or a few paid people devoted to keeping an organization of volunteers going full time. Maybe that can be supported through fellowships, maybe through advertising, maybe through fundraisers, maybe through subscribers, and maybe through all these.

But there are also dollar needs beyond staff. Paying for servers, subscriptions to Lexis/Nexis, FOIA requests, sometimes professional expertise (a campaign finance lawyer, a forensic accountant) -- and if one gets ambitious for on-the-ground reporting -- airfare, hotel, etc. These are going to have to be taken into consideration as these organizations move into "more serious" territory. And remember, it's going to be an uphill battle, with the traditional media guarding its turf ferociously every step of the way, so these groups need to make sure their products are pretty unassailable (a standard the traditional media has not felt compelled to live up to, sadly).

Q: Will the traditional media's hostility to "outsider journalism" eventually turn to cooperation?

A: In some ways, it already has. I think some traditional journalists are reading blogs and websites and following up. Some are forming informal relationships with citizen journalist organizations and their representatives. But I think it depends on the mindset of the individual reporters and editors from the traditional media. Some will feel threatened and will remain hostile; some will see it as an opportunity to help offset the cost cuts to newsrooms. It's hard to make a blanket statement about how all of it will turn out.

Q: How do we make it, on the whole, a plus for them to pick up and run with crowdsourced citizen journalism investigations?

A: A couple of thoughts: build contacts with traditional journalists. Make sure your stuff is well-linked and well-sourced so traditional media journalists can follow it.

Q: Is relying on traditional journalists to spread the word inherently undesirable?

A: Good question. I wrestle with this myself. Part of this has to do with our ideas about whether traditional media is redeemable. I think because of its neglect to inform the public in the past six years about many stories, a lot of people are ready to write them off altogether. I guess this is a legitimate view, but it's not one I hold ... but then, I began my career as a traditional media-type. I think right now, whatever your view, the MSM is still the biggest game in town, and we must find ways to drive serious citizen investigations into the limelight through them. I think there is a real possibility for positive cooperation and that the country would best be served by active citizen journalism participants AND savvy traditional journalists (a line I think is already beginning to blur ... what is Politico, after all? It seems to me to be traditional journalists trying to tap the online, more citizen-based activist readers.) Citizen journalism should ideally be serving as a wake-up call that exerts pressure from the outside on traditional outlets to start serving the audience that wants more investigative reporting. If the MSM responds, we're all better off because we don't have to spend as much time creating an answering powerful infrastructure. If, however, there is little or no response, I predict that infrastructure will eventually get built in response to the non-response.

Q: What has surprised you the most with Daily Kos?

A: The size surprises me now. That it's stayed at least minimally functional with the amount of comments, diaries, page views it gets is astounding. The Scoop software has been customized and pushed to its limit. Yet people still find new ways to use it. I was impressed when Senator Kennedy put up a diary on immigration in March. People asked him questions and he came back an hour or so later with an audio recording of answers to the specific questions. That was a really creative use of the space (and probably more efficient for him or his staff than typing it out, I would think).

Also at Daily Kos, despite the constant calls for the "Front Page" (or Markos) to do this or that, pay attention to this or that, a lot of people really "get it" in terms of self-organizing. A perfect example of that was during the Gonzales' testimony a couple of weeks agoin April. A couple of days before, diarists organized a schedule to live blog it, what order each diarist would put their diaries up in (because it was known comments would hit the hundreds pretty fast and new diaries would be needed). Then, when it was all done, they converted all the diaries, with comments, into a PDF and made it [ available]. NONE of this was done with any admin or moderator help. It was simply people who saw a need, joined together, found a solution, and got it done. Amazing stuff.

Q: What has surprised you the most with ePluribus Media?

A: EPluribus is a different kind of organization (and I haven't been involved in it for over a year, so my observations are about what surprised me during its founding and first year). I think what most surprised me was how many professional people (lawyers, professors, experts in many fields) were willing to basically take on a second job for free and help with the research. And this for a sustained amount of time. This really pointed up to me how invested people are in these projects, how much they themselves get out of the organization in terms of feeling they're giving back, and getting personal fulfillment as well.

Q: EPluribus Media does much of its reporting in private, as traditional investigative journalism does. On balance, has this working in private groups been a plus?

A: The plus is obvious -- you're not alerting those you're looking into. Another plus: the writing end product has a chance to be a lot better, fact-checked and all, than when you're slamming out two diaries a day in public from comments like I was early on in the Gannon investigation. However, at least for me, there ended up being a real loss of ... I don't know ... feverish excitement. Of course, having a story unfold as rapidly as Gannon did is unusual; that may have been an once-in-a-lifetime kind of "shooting the rapids" that you wouldn't find in any medium. The other negative is that I think it makes it more difficult to recruit and incorporate new members when it's being done in private. It begins to look or feel exclusionary, even if it's not. That may be something that can be avoided in some sort of hybrid model? Or more reach-out? I don't know the answer for sure. And it may have just been my own feelings, too, about the initial story, the excitement, the possibility and the success of it. Anything that comes after that can feel like some sort of a letdown.

Q: Do you really think there's wisdom in crowds? If so, what's the clearest example you know of?

A: Depends on the crowd. That at a revival meeting? Not so much. If it's a crowd that is large enough, and agrees that facts matter, it will be self-correcting (if it's seeking an end that's emotion- or faith-based, therefore unverifiable, no). The clearest example I can think of is exhibited daily in diaries at Daily Kos. If someone doesn't have links to a direct quote, report or research, readers immediately call a writer out on assertions. It's not even done in a spirit of meanness because the agreed-upon rules are so clear. People want verification so if they are trying to present evidence to others down the road it's not just a ranty diary at Daily Kos but is backed up by verifiable facts. People will enter a diary and say, "Can you give me the link for that statement so-and-so is making? I want to check it out." That's something that's done in the spirit of knowing we don't want to be made an ass of down the line with bad sources or pure speculation.

Also, as I'm sure you know as a writer, you NEED a second set of eyes to know if you made your point clearly (that's what editors are for). Sometimes you get so used to the details of a complex subject you're handling and presenting, you forget that someone new to it can't make the leaps that you can. In the "wisdom of crowds" case, you are working with -- and presenting to -- many different levels of readers, i.e., some who may know as much or more than you (some may be lawyers, doctors or other experts on your subject, so they're crucial critics), and you may be making the case to those completely unfamiliar to the subject and you need to hear, "Hey, you lost me on that one. Can you explain in another way? Do you mean such-and-such?"

Of course, there are drawbacks to this as well -- sometimes the input stage goes on too long, sometimes too many cooks spoil the meal by wanting too many things addressed. This is where the crowd aspect can cut both ways -- making it not streamlined enough, getting nitpicky or PC about wording, etc. But I think the trade-off is worth it if some reasonable sorting of responsibilities can be agreed upon.

Q: What do you think the next phase of crowdsourcing will look like? Have we hit its true potential?

A: I think it hasn't reached its potential yet. I think the real use of it will be in culling over document dumps quickly. What I'd really like to see is a requirement for all proposed legislation to be online in full at least 72 hours before being voted on by Congress. The Patriot Act showed us what happens when legislators don't have time to review complex legislation, and this is really a place where the crowd effect could help. If 50 people divided it up, went through it, reported about their portion, and then one or two writers summed up the findings, citizens would be in a position to knowledgeably contact their legislators with their view of how they should vote. Right now, both the public and often the lawmakers themselves don't have time or a place to harness a lot of eyes to analyzing the impact of specific proposed legislation.

And obviously, the stuff like the email dumps in the US Attorney cases can be sorted through much faster with many, many eyes.

Q: On the double-edged sword of visibility - a high-profile crowdsourced investigative journalism project will attract more participants, but is likely to face the same "scrubbing of websites" problem that the Jeff Gannon investigation ran into. For this reason, EPM's investigations aren't done "in public" on a webpage anyone can view. Has taking the investigations private ameliorated the "scrubbing" problem, or is it still an issue?

A: With the caveat that I haven't been involved with the group for the past year or so, I'd say at least during the first year, there was very little website scrubbing done once it went private. Also, we were very aware that it had happened in the past and made a concerted effort to save the pages we ran across that had information and we made screenshots as well before ever writing about what we'd found.

Q: Do you think pro-am collaborations with the mainstream press will be the way of the future? (In reality, in what ways would such collaborations work, and in what ways would they not?)

A: Yes, probably some model will be one of the dominant ones in the future. But the ground is really shifting, access to information is really shifting, and I think what we'll see is many more types of models being viable, with no one model the only dominant one. I think we won't know which ones work, and where, and why, and what topics they're covering, until we try. I think one thing that hinders experimentation in this country is the idea that we only try stuff we are pretty certain of succeeding before it's even attempted. I think we need to try different things, and tell ourselves that eliminating models that don't work well under certain circumstances is important information to know as we move forward. The process of elimination is often undervalued. What's wrong with trying something, assessing, and taking it as positive information that this particular model doesn't work? That's not failure. That's important information. This country is too obsessed with one definition of "success," and I think it freezes up people who otherwise would propose efforts that are off-the-wall and creative that actually could provide some important insight into different processes.

Q: Leonard Witt listed required roles to be filled in a crowdsourced cit-j organization - any comments on his suggestions?

A: After a quick initial look, he seems to be headed in the right direction. I think there may be a few too many categories that could be collapsed together, and I'm not sure of his categorization of pro/am ... I think some of the pro stuff could be shouldered by an "amateur" that was serious about following journalistic guidelines.

Q.: Do you think a citizen journalism support organization similar to IRE (Investigative Reporters and Editors; membership not open to most citizen journalists) would be useful?

A: I think there are enough online guidelines for standards and links to useful tools available that if citizen journalists aren't invited to the table, they can set up their own. It certainly would be useful, I would think.

Q: What should we (today) as citizen journalists take as our model and as our values?

A: I think we are creating a new model, but we should embrace the traditional values of idealized journalism -- get your facts straight, write clearly and directly, offer corrections quickly and immediately if you get it wrong, back up your analysis with evidence, clearly label opinion as separate from news (and keep opinion OUT of news as much as you humanly can). Really, there's no need to reinvent the wheel. What draws people to journalism in the first place is curiosity, and the "crusade" aspect, and a kind of heroic belief that we are better citizens when better informed. Just because the press has never lived up to its ideal in this country doesn't mean it's not a worthy aspiration in and of itself. I think citizen journalism groups should welcome the fact that there are pretty lofty standards out there already encoded for professionals. Why not make use of them?

Q: How can citizen journalism get recognition and readership to the point that it's no longer dependent on the mainstream press for spreading the word?

A: I'm not sure that's the ideal model ... it strikes me as a last resort. But I think if it does end up moving toward independence, the information market will help mold the model. More people will seek out nitty-gritty stories as the population takes to the web for more meat. More readerships will gradually (I would think) drive more advertising dollars or more subscriptions or more donor money to supporting such citizen-based enterprises.

(Edited by Amanda Michel)