The Accountability Newsroom Summary

7/30/2019 The Accountability Newsroom Summary

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This is a May 2013 refinement of the idea for the Accountability Newsroom. I entereda

synopsis of thisin the 2013 Knight News Challenge. I still think its an interesting idea.

Others with more resources, technical and otherwise, are working methodically toward

similar visions. I believe some government agencies are moving themselves forward

toward a vision of being a Social Enterprise. Although these internal efforts wont havethe newsroom aspect of this proposal, I commend them. My best wishes to all working

earnestly in this arena to improve government and its services.

The AccountabilityNewsroom

Summaryby Sally Duros

PoynterInstituteDigital EntrepreneurshipBootcamp,2011

This is my 30-second elevator pitch:

The Accountability Newsroom is a digital ombudsman that creates jobs for journalists incuration, community building and investigations while applying the wisdom of frontline workers

to improve government.

What is The Accountability Newsroom?

TAN creates a dotted line between frontline employees and the government executives in

charge.

This paradigm differentiates between corrupted systems and corrupt individuals. Its product is

real government change while creating new types of jobs for journalists. Its allies would include

citizens, workers, unions, and others such as businessesall affected by governmentinefficiency. TAN would be a digital tool that would gather the energy of government workers to

change their work environments while keeping them safe and anonymous

Its benefits would be many:

1) TAN would create a rich new database of trusted sources who are working toward

government change.

2) TANs fully developed vetting system could create new classifications of jobs for journalists

as curators, commentators and news gatherers in online community building.

3) Coordinated with citizen input from other services, TAN would be able to shine the spotlight

on inefficient services, creating greater transparency in troubled workplaces.

4) This transparency would be a tool that the newsroom watchdog could use to turn political will

in the direction of better management, efficient services and greater accountability.

5) Ultimately, solutions developed on TAN would improve government.
https://www.newschallenge.org/open/open-government/submission/the-accountability-newsroom-is-a-citizen-public-employee-collaboration/https://www.newschallenge.org/open/open-government/submission/the-accountability-newsroom-is-a-citizen-public-employee-collaboration/https://www.newschallenge.org/open/open-government/submission/the-accountability-newsroom-is-a-citizen-public-employee-collaboration/https://www.newschallenge.org/open/open-government/submission/the-accountability-newsroom-is-a-citizen-public-employee-collaboration/


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Here's why I think my project is needed:

Without an effective tool for organizational change, politicians and investigative journalists

claims to cut waste and red tape of government are empty rhetoric.

Commonly what is thought of as waste is line items in a budget that reflect salaries and benefits

to workers. Sometimes the job is in a department that has been duplicated or rendered obsolete.In other case, the waste is fallout from the usual investigative journalism model, where corrupt

politicians are exposed but corrupted systems remain. The corruptor is whisked away, and a

patchwork fix is planted over the damaged system simulating repair to the public eye. In reality,

these patchworks often add paper work and bureaucracy.

TAN will be the landing pad for public workers who want to improve government. Affiliated

with an established newsroom, its reporters, curators and community builders will encourage,

support, listen to and protect insiders while collecting info to change the culture and processes of

government.

This is what I've been doing with my life, and my proudest accomplishment to date:I highly value my 20 years experience in the newsroom and as a freelance journalist, as well as

my years in public service.

Co-joined, these experiences help me see patterns, a very big picture, a systems perspective.

When I worked in government I could see the promise of technology to make a difference in

government operations and services. My vision is shared by others - such as those in the Gov2.0

world that news is evolving in a way now that could make possible some partnerships

between government and journalists that could best serve the places where we live as well as our

precious Democracy.

I left a career in journalism to work for Mayor Richard M. Daley and also at the Chicago Public

Schools. At the time I took the job with Mayor Daley, I had the option of attending graduate

school at the London School of Economics or the University of Chicago Harris School of Public

Policy on a half scholarship. I decided to take the job in Mayor Daleys office figuring that I

could be paid to learn about policy in city government rather than pay someone else to teach me.

Building upon my experience launching and running Crains City&State a publication

subsequently purchased by Congressional Quarterly my job was in organizational

development not public relations. During that time, I worked with some notable people among

them, Valerie Jarrett and Michelle [Robinson] Obama. My work there helped me see how the

city operates from the very top levels of its landscape through the business, government,charitable, university and civic sectors.

I joined the Chicago Public Schools and it was not a good culture fit for me, and my mother was

ill so I left. Shortly afterward my mother died and after some soul searching, I decided that I

wanted to continue my work on the Internet I had worked on some related projects in City Hall

as well as take what I had learned about government back to the newsroom. In 2006, I landed

a job at the Chicago Sun-Times as the Real Estate Editor.


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My experience in government [and years self-employed as a consulting web editor, editor, writer

and fundraiser] greatly enriched my Sun-Times sectionwhere I brought a consumers

perspective and digital skills to bear including a blog and creative partnerships. Sadly, it was a

bad time for newspapers and I was laid off in 2008. But the moment was right for my experience

in journalism, technology and government to come together as part of the groundswell of

innovation renewing journalism and newsrooms.

My experience at the Chicago Sun-Times taught me how difficult it is to bring about internal

organizational change, to change processes and culture. It echoed my experience as a change-

maker in Chicago City government and at the Chicago Public Schools.

This project is the beginning of a solution to addressing that difficulty

On my resume, I say that I am an:

Independent journalist and digital strategist who provides insight and solutions to organizations

active in the multidimensional worlds of news, Web and community.

This self definition feels right.

Detail how you will generate content. How frequently will you update?

Heres how it works: TAN is affiliated with an established news organization. Using the power

of that partners partnerships and organizing tools, a government agency is identified to work

with. A joint invitation is made to government workers to participate.

Workers, anonymous but verified, contribute stories from their workplaces. In all cases, the story

is confirmed and vetted prior to being posted. Sometimes the submitted story will report

inefficiencies or bad management. Other times it will report waste, fraud and corruption.

While culling the tips, TAN identifies potential fraud in a government department. That lead is

pulled out for closer work. Staff members identify keywords and run Google and print ads to

attract sources and build an investigation. If the confirmed problem is of a more mundane nature,

the tip remains in the searchable database. The spotlight on the problem creates accountability.

Journalist moderators host a discussion that leads to problem solving.

TAN is a win-win for all parties. It provides public employees access to a transparent system that

communicates upwards through the hierarchy. It suggests potential fixes to long-standing

problems. And it provides a rich source of leads to the partnering news organization.

TAN will allow a local newsroom to respond quickly when a problem is reported in a

municipality. Using TAN, the news org will have culled a ready network of insidersspark

plugs and change agentswho share affinity and can provide insight and context, improving

reporting on the issue.

Most important, officials will be able to see the processes in place levels below in the hierarchy

as described by public employees in the front lines. This transparency is an information tool that


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the news organization can use to encourage change for good government. It is a tool government

leaders will pay close attention to.

In addition, TAN is innovative in several ways.

First, it uses a crowd-sourcing, online strategy for identifying government inefficiencies orabuses.

Second this approach works from inside government. By allowing government employees to put

a spotlight on pervasive problems in their workplaces, it encourages accountability and emerges

solutions. Employee reports posted anonymously on TAN will help the news organization

actively bridge the gap between what government is and what it should be.

Third, this is a paradigm shift in online community building. TAN encourages top-down,

bottom-up and peer-to-peer information exchange and establishes new standards for government

information transparency, local accountability news and civic engagement.

How can this be sustained?

Once proven, TAN can be a tool that can used by any newsroom to work with any level of

government. The majority of the work that must be done is developing the vetting and curatorial

processes through a Beta project to understand how many people it will take to operate

efficiently. I am hoping that one newsroom staff could be trained to be the Chief Editor of TAN

and reporters and EAs from the news agencys City Desk would work in tandem with them.

The software model for TAN will be open source.

IDENTIFY BETA AGENCY

The Accountability Newsroom will work best starting small with one municipal agency and as

the tools is built and proven grow incrementally larger.

VETTING PROCESS

Key to TANs success will be a vetting process that enables TAN to verify municipal workers

yet protect their identity. Another key process will be the one of sifting investigative leads from

organizational change leads. This process must be well-defined and documented in detail so that

it can be taught by senior staff to interns and new journalists.

Why I know I can make this happen:

This idea is a refinement of principles harnessed in controversial websites. It would be a gift for

the reform-minded citizenry, government executive or politician: combine Whistleblower power

with the desire of front-line employees to make a difference in their work environments.

Intellectual support for this idea resides in writing by Peter Drucker, who suggested in his 1967

book The Effective Executive: In an era dominated by knowledge workers rather than manual


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workers, expertise canand often doestrump position as an indicator of who is really leading

and who is really following.

Carnegie Mellon adjunct professor Robert Kelley challenges what is called the leadership

myththe idea that leaders are all-powerful and all-important. Kelly posits the existence of

exemplary followersthose who act with intelligence, independence, courage, and a strongsense of ethics.

Kelly says that one should not mistake lack of authority with lack of power and influence.

Spurred by cultural and technological advances, more followers are either challenging their

leaders or, in many cases, simply circumventing them altogether. Followers can mass-send

messages via e-mail, collect data using concealed devices, and post their evidence on websites.

It is this power to self organize and crowd-shift that TAN and its newsroom partner will harness.

I have professional background working in organizational change in Chicago City government

and at the Chicago Public Schools. In this, I supervised blue suit MBAs whose role was to diginto a bureaucracy, map the system there and come up with a plan to simplify it, ie. cut the

waste and red tape of government.

Sally Duros is a long-time business journalist who has been an editor for theChicago Sun-Times and an internal consultant on good government inChicago city hall. Currently she is a social journalist working toward the nextgeneration of successful, credible online newsrooms. Connect with heron Google+ and on twitter atsaduros.
https://plus.google.com/110486408498759400393?rel=authorhttp://twitter.com/saduroshttps://plus.google.com/110486408498759400393?rel=authorhttp://twitter.com/saduros

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