The superb Covering Health blog operated by the Association of Health Care Journalists pointed me to an unusual experiment being conducted by ProPublica, the foundation-supported, non-profit investigative news site.
For two years, ProPublica reporters Tracy Weber and Charles Ornstein have investigated the handling of disciplinary actions against nurses. It turns out that much of what we’ve read about doctors is also true of nurses–inept nurses continue to do their jobs, those who are disciplined easily find jobs in other states. Some nurses are practicing despite having criminal records.
That’s straight-ahead investigative reporting. It’s what ProPublica was set up to do, if I read the site’s mission statement correctly.
ProPublica’s experiment goes beyond that. Ornstein and Weber have written a comprehensive guide explaining to other reporters how they can use ProPublica’s techniques and reporting to investigate nurses in their own states. The reporters have given away information it took them months to assemble.
But why?
ProPublica execs Paul Steiger and Stephen Engelberg explain in an interesting post that they are trying to establish a new collaborative model for journalism. “We believe that healthy competition among proud journalists brings more news to light,” they write. “But in this era of shrinking resources, there is clearly a role for new forms of collaboration.”
They are pursuing that goal two ways: By giving away reporting tools, as they are doing with the investigation of the nurses. And they have established a volunteer reporting network, through which ProPublica can ask outside reporters for help and those reporters can contribute to investigative projects.
Reporters who want to be alerted when ProPublica has released new reporting tools can sign up for them, and those who want to join the reporting network can do so here.
For more information on this unusual tactic, read Steiger and Engelberg’s Why We’re Giving Away Our Reporting Recipe.
– Paul Raeburn
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