E-Media Tidbits

Politifact.com Politifact: Truth Squad backed by a database.

In an Aug. 22 post, reporter and site developer Matt Waite explained what makes Politifact different from most other 2008 presidential election coverage online and elsewhere:

"We've taken the political 'truth squad' story (where a reporter takes a campaign commercial or a stump speech, fact checks it and writes a story), blown it apart into its fundamental pieces, and reassembled it into a data-driven Web site. The whole site is inspired by Adrian Holovaty's manifesto on the fundamental way newspaper sites need to change. ...Certain kinds of newspaper content have consistent pieces that could be better served to the reader from a database instead of a newspaper story. ...

"A statement from a politician has consistent pieces. It has a speaker, that speaker has a political party, the statement has a subject and a forum in which they said it. After we fact-check that statement, we assign a ruling to it, summing up the veracity of what they say on a scale from true to false to pants on fire (a personal favorite). All of those things become fields in a database. Statements are all in their own database, and we also are writing more traditional stories on the statements. And those articles have some common pieces, like a byline. We're experimenting with greater transparency, by listing our sources for each statement and story."

The site's focus on structured information is anything but dry -- in fact, it allows for a lot of fun. But what I like most about Politifact is that it respects voters' intelligence and serves their curiosity by giving them informational "Lincoln Logs" from which they can assemble their own meaning and conclusions. This is accentuated by the way you can browse the site by data types: candidate, subject, venue, etc.

However, I think Politifact could benefit from adding these features:

• Site search. I'm surprised that a data-driven site does not offer a simple site search. More than half of Web users are search dominant, preferring search to guided navigation. The site search should be available from every page of Politifact.

• Wiki-based index. Breaking political statements down into a database of components is useful, but the big picture helps too -- how do these pieces fit together? Narrative stories are one way to do that, but wikis are another -- and in this case, it might offer the most effective and flexible synthesis. A wiki approach to indexing makes complex interconnections apparent.

• Greater choice of feeds/e-mail alerts. Right now, Politifact offers feeds either for the whole site, or by candidate (statements or stories). But what if someone wants to track an issue, or a region? It would be nice to offer a feed generator that mirrors the database structure, so people could choose the criteria for the feeds they want. Also, if Politifact adds a site search as recommended above, then maybe they could also allow people to generate feeds from custom searches.

• Public discussion. Right now, the only way site visitors can engage with Politifact is by e-mailing truthometer@politifact.com. However, people who have a deep enough interest in political news and information to delve into what Politifact has to offer love to discuss and debate. Why start a great conversation but drive it elsewhere?