A citizen journalist from TPMCafe stands up
Anna Haynes interviews "Mrs. Panstreppon" of TPM Cafe via email, May 11-21, 2007
In her TPM Cafe profile, Mrs. Panstreppon describes herself as a "retired brain surgeon," but her true background in accounting serves the citizen journalism community far more effectively than brain surgery could ever do.
Named after the prescient aunt of Saki's short story Hyacinth, Mrs. Panstreppon has investigated such political figures as Grover Norquist and former Rep. Curt Weldon among many others.
She keeps us up-to-date on those investigations on her TPM Cafe blog.
Mrs. Panstreppon has worked alone, in collaboration with one other person, and in crowdsourcing projects such as the Earmarks Project and TPM Muckraker's DOJ Document Dump.
Anna Haynes: What do you think the next phase of crowdsourcing will look like? Have we hit its true potential?
"Mrs Panstreppon": I'd like to see crowdsourcing become more organized and take advantage of on-the-spot reporting. For example, property records here on Long Island are not available online but if someone needed property records for an investigation, I might volunteer to visit the county clerk's office.
5/17/07
