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Here’s a nice break from gloom-and-doom stories about the demise of journalism: rare praise for a daily newspaper — specifically, our own Star Tribune. And I concur.
Editor & Publisher’s 2009 “10 That Do It Right” list includes the Strib for its ambitious “Ballot Challenge” project, which yielded a handful of posts right here at MnIndy. The paper made available online all 6,600 contested ballots in Minnesota’s U.S. Senate recount, including ballots by the Flying Spaghetti Monster, Nickel Bag and “Amy Whinehouse.”
Here’s what E&P had to say:
Star Tribune, Minneapolis
Crowd-sourcing is a digital journalism skill that still eludes most newspapers. But the Star Tribune pulled off something even more ambitious with its “Ballot Challenge” project, centered on the recount of the Minnesota U.S. Senate vote between Republican Norm Coleman and the eventual winner, Democrat Al Franken. Call it crowd-deputizing.At StarTribune.com, users could inspect all 6,600 ballots disputed by one side or the other. One immediate effect was to highlight the many illegally frivolous challenges — embarrassing the campaigns into dropping thousands of disputes.
Digital Community Manager Leah Betancourt notes that this wisdom of the online masses, aided by a panel of experts recruited by the paper, led users to come almost eerily close to the margin of victory given Franken by the state Canvassing Board. Strib readers figured a 78-vote lead. The board awarded a 49-vote lead.
Via Romenesko.
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3 Comments »
Comment posted August 10, 2009 @ 8:49 pm
They did it right, most of the time. When they made mistakes they were slow to correct them causing people like John Lott to run around making claims that the canvasing board was biased. Even Factcheck.org is still linking to the ballot challenge of proof of bias. They have a claim that some ballots with an X crossed out were awarded to Franken while the same were not awarded to Coleman. The link at the Trib still shows the vote as rejected when in fact, the challenge was withdrawn and the vote was awarded to Coleman. They also made the same mistake as the Coleman camp in publishing personal info on the absentee ballots without redacting the info.
Comment posted August 10, 2009 @ 9:08 pm
They made a mistake with the Ballot Challenge that went uncorrected for a long time? I wasn’t aware of that. I’ve got my issues with the Strib, but I think they did a good job with this feature, and the entire process (much like the UpTake’s live streams of the proceedings) benefited from the transparency.
Comment posted August 10, 2009 @ 11:22 pm
It still hasn’t been corrected at the Trib or Factcheck. If you go here
http://www.factcheck.org/2009/01/mining-the-minnesota-recount/ under the Partisanship section the say some votes were awarded for Coleman while some were not. This is the ballot in question http://senaterecount.startribune.com/ballots/index.php?review_date=2008-12-16&index=25 The Trib claims this ballot went for no one but if you download the spreadsheet of challenged ballots, you will see that Franken withdrew the challenge and the vote was awarded to Coleman. I supplied Factcheck with the proof but they never changed their claim. The Trib did correct most of their other errors which made for embarassing moments for Lott. The trib would post an incorrect call, Lott would post proof of bias, someone contacted the Trib and corrected the errors, making Lott look foolish because his links had changed and now disproved his claims.
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