I love this idea "Ask Your Lawmker." It is participatory and pro-am. Very similar to Yoosk in the UK whose founder wrote this NewAssignment.net piece, but AskYourLawmaker.org has a more refined focused angle – You want to ask lawmakers a question and journalists can track them down and get the answers.
But don’t take my word for it…..(any child of the 80’s should get that reference. First comment that pins it, wins).
(update#1: I do know from talking with Tim Hood at Yoosk that this is very much in tune with what they want to do).
Update#2: In the comments Tim updates me that this is the work of Chapter Three LLC. I didn’t know that writing the post – but that’s how small a world it is.
Reading Rainbow?
Ding ding ding ding!!!!!!!
Dorian wins!!!
We are very flattered here at Yoosk! A remarkably similar concept, with even many of the sections tying together in exactly the same way as our site. It’s a nice looking design- congratulations to whoever did it.
I’m not sure I’d agree that it is ‘more refined’ Dave but rather that it is the logical conclusion of the Yoosk concept that I described on my post on newassignment. As I remember, I talked about exactly this model- that we were developing Yoosk as a networked journalism tool that mainstream media can use to crowd source questions from the public, which their own journalists then get answers to.
This model was also the basis of our ultimately unsuccessful Knight News application (congrats again Dave, by the way).
I think it is more just a question of CNC recognising the potential of this model, which by coincidence, we have just started piloting in the UK, and having the resources to go out and get answers.
http://www.journalism.co.uk/2/articles/531507.php
So congratulations to CNC. I’d like to add that if any other established news organization would like to do the same thing, they can contact us- we can set up a dedicated domain on yoosk with their own CMS and database of public figures, user community, voting mechanism, widgets etc very quickly- no need to do it themselves!
Just spotted it was Zack Rosen’s company that did the design and development, so congratulations to Zack and his team.
Dave, interesting concept…how do they actually get the answer from the law maker? More detail necessary before my judgement is made.
Also, get Disqus for comments on the blog. Seesmic vids enables and a really easy way to track comments.
Talk to you soon.
Hey Ryan, Bryan here… from the video.
To answer your question, Ask Your Lawmaker (AYL) is a project of Capitol News Connection, the largest radio news service in the United States Capitol (we represent more than 40 public radio stations and can be heard on more than 200 frequencies across the US). Everyday our reporters interview legislators outside hearing rooms, on the way to and from votes, in their office, and in our Capitol Hill studio. In short, these reporters fold the questions we receive on AYL into their normal reporting duties. Once the question is answered by one or multiple lawmakers the audio is passed along to me; then I post it to the site.