San Francisco ContribuTally: following the local money
Location
San Francisco ContribuTally is the first Web site to give local reporters the kind of access to government data that federal and state reporters get from sites like opensecrets.org or MAPLight.org. It gives journalists the ability to look up correlations between political giving and the decisions politicians make on issues.
About You
Section 1: About You
First Name
Michael
Last Name
Stoll
Website
Organization
SF Public Press
Country
United States
Section 2: About Your Organization
Organization Name
SF Public Press
Organization Website
Organization Phone
415-495-7377
Organization Address
965 Mission St., Suite 220, San Francisco, CA 94103
Organization Country
United States
Your idea
Name Your Project
San Francisco ContribuTally: following the local money
What is your idea? What makes it innovative? Why is it important?
San Francisco ContribuTally is the first Web site to give local reporters the kind of access to government data that federal and state reporters get from sites like opensecrets.org or MAPLight.org. It gives journalists the ability to look up correlations between political giving and the decisions politicians make on issues.
Will you launch your idea as a business or non-profit?
Non-profit
Country your work focuses on
United States
What will be the impact of your idea?
San Francisco ContribuTally, sponsored by the local news nonprofit SF Public Press, will be a pilot project - built for use in any city or town.
We believe that by deploying sophisticated data-crunching tools on a local level, we will greatly enhance the ability of reporters to expose political conflicts of interest in City Hall. Reporters need accessible and accurate data and the ability to analyze it in a flexible way. We will build a standardized campaign finance database from three sources: 1) campaign finance records, 2) lobbying records and 3) votes, contracts and other key decisions.
Local news coverage of conflict-of-interest stories is often conjectural or only gets reported long after the fact. San Francisco ContribuTally merges Web 2.0 data collection and analysis tools with shoe-leather reporting - empowering local journalists to correlate raw government information in the course of routine, real-time news coverage. With each story the database grows. Public access to the data will open the possibility of continued research and conversation.
Who will help you develop your idea? Why are you the one to make this happen?
The ContribuTally project is led by Andrew Page, former associate director of MAPLight.org. He played an integral role in MAPLight.org’s emergence as a national leader in Web 2.0 government transparency. He is currently membership director at SF Public Press and sits on its steering committee. Page has more than 20 years of experience working for grassroots organizations and has led several through major technology projects.
Michael Stoll is founder and executive director of SF Public Press, a nonprofit noncommercial news organization dedicated to producing important local public-interest news reporting in San Francisco. SF Public Press is funded by the San Francisco Foundation and more than 200 individual donors. Stoll has been a reporter at the Hartford Courant, Philadelphia Inquirer and San Francisco Examiner, and has written for Columbia Journalism Review and the Christian Science Monitor.
This project also benefits from skilled advisers, including Neil Drumm, a Drupal, PHP and MySQL programmer who is responsible for most of the code that powers MAPLight.org, and Oliver Luby, who has deep knowledge of the operation of campaign finance databases in San Francisco.
How much will it cost to launch your idea? (This can be an estimate)
We can begin developing this project with as little as $25,000. The first-year cost for full implementation of ContribuTally will be $275,000. This includes one-time fees for database development, full-time salaries for a project director and managing editor, and two full-time-equivalent reporters. The cost estimate also includes basic overhead and miscellaneous project expenses.
We have submitted a proposal for San Francisco ContribuTally to the Knight News Challenge and have made it to the second round. We are also seeking funding for ContribuTally by applying for other grants from charitable foundations.
This Entry is about (Issues)
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