Irish Election Reporting on An Bord Snip – Wanted: Help.

We’re going to try something new on Irish Election for the release of the An Bord Snip report. It’s expected at some point in the next few days, probably early Thursday (tomorrow) or early Friday.

Irish Election has a community of commenters that most media outlets don’t – that’s what makes this site worth reading, really – we’re looking to leverage that community over the next day or so to dissemble the contents of the report quickly and interestingly. The aim would be to spread the workload through the readership and writers once the report is published and collectively summarise and add context to what it contains quickly and as accurately as possible.

Basically, instead of keeping everyone waiting while I read the report, the other media outlets’ reports on the report and then write it, I’m looking for others to help me build what’d be an Irish Election Community Post, a group-post, I suppose.

I’m therefore looking for a list of people I can contact via email when the report is released.

If I get a decent list I’ll email that group once it is released and immediately give them a certain number of pages (say, max 20 pages) to summarise, I’ll also put up a new post. Each person on the list is then asked to read those pages and summarise them in a comment on the new post. We’d be asking for about 400 words (about half an A4 page, typed) for each comment, in any form you wish – terrible English is accepted and appreciated. I’ll then take the comments/summaries and subsume them into the post and attempt to add whatever additional context I can (everyone will be credited and by-lined)

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So the workflow would be:

Report released >

I email the list of people and assign pages to each person >

I open a new post specifically for the report’s contents >

People read their pages and summarise them in a comment on the new post, adding whatever context they can (i.e. these cuts will impact people who are working in this area or getting this type of benefit, in this demographic) >

I subsume the comments into the post as they come in and add whatever additional context I can, I’ll also edit them avoid duplication, fix spellings, keep the content concise etc >

After a certain period (hopefully, say, two/three hours) we’ll then have a summarised report with added context and therefore a better idea of what exactly the report contains, minus the business-speak that it’ll undoubtedly contain.

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The general thinking is that the content will fall into a number of categories – civil service performance, quangos, spending programs, health spending, public service numbers and public service pay. Of course, that may be wrong and there may be other areas covered, we may see some surprises. If we get a decent list we could split each area between two or three people and do each one quickly.

If you’re interested in participating leave a comment below and I’ll add your email address to the short list I’ve developed already from Twitter. If there’s an area you’d consider yourself to have a particular expertise or interest in then say so in the comment and I’ll try and ensure you’re given pages that relate to that area.

As I said, this is something of an experiment but if we get enough people involved it’ll be a great resource.

If you add your name to the list I’ll email you later tonight to confirm.