UK newspaper The Guardian is making its schedule of upcoming stories available to the public in a two-week experiment, in an effort to elevate transparency in the newsroom. The paper is inviting readers to contribute by contacting the reporters assigned to each story. The paper has embedded three Google Docs spreadsheets listing stories in progress over on its live blog. The assigned reporter's name and a link to his or her Twitter handle is listed alongside a short description of each story.
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Not all stories are included on the list, of course; exclusives and embargoed content is kept private to protect both sources and the paper from competitors. (On Monday, for instance, The Guardian left off mention of a developing scandal involving UK defense secretary Liam Fox.)
Dan Roberts, national news editor at The Guardian, says the experiment -- which is similar to one being run over at The Atlantic Wire -- is a logical outgrowth of the paper's move towards a more open news environment. Often readers will point out what's wrong with a story after it has been published, or complain that an important news item failed to be covered too late after the fact, Roberts says. This will allow them to address these issues early on.
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"If we tell people where we're headed they can point out important aspects to cover," Roberts says. "Likewise, if we're missing a story they can tell us early enough, instead of moaning about it the next day."
When asked if he is concerned about opening up access to competing papers, Roberts says the potential advantages far outweighed any edge the paper would be giving competitors. "We're [already] getting a lot of help from Twitter," he says. "Some of our best sources are [readers] who see what we're doing and help us along."
Part of the beauty of Twitter is that readers and reporters can now quickly connect without clogging up the latter's inboxes. "If we put up every reporter's email address we'd get a lot more pushback [from staff]; their inboxes would fill up quite quickly," Roberts says. "Twitter allows us to pick out the good things and ignore the daft ones."
Roberts says it has attracted a ?surprising amount of interest? thus far. "We?ve had hundreds and hundreds of people get in touch," he says. "Three or four concrete story ideas have developed.?
The experiment will run for two weeks, and may become a permanent part of The Guardian's operations. The trial period will primarily be used to optimize the format, says Roberts.
This story originally published on Mashable here.
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