For live event coverage, more and more people turn to their TVs and computers simultaneously. This is especially true for political coverage — and you could really see it in action during last night’s presidential debate. A team of journalists from Politifact and the St. Petersburg Times used Twitter to provide live factual backgrounding for some of the candidates’ statements during the debate. Lots of Twitter users followed this action, and many responded to or expanded this conversation.
This morning I spoke to one of the founders of Politifact, news technologist Matthew Waite, about this experience. Listen to this interview (16:06):
(Listen)
A few highlights from the interview:
- Team. Waite handled the tweeting and interaction with Twitter users. Working alongside him were Politifact editor (and St. Pete Times D.C. bureau chief) Bill Adair, news researcher Angie Drobnic Holan (“who has a freakishly encyclopedic knowledge of everything we’ve done on Politifact”), and staff writer/Politifact contributor David DeCamp.
- Experimental, supportive environment. “The whole live-tweeting thing was just a seat-of-the-pants idea,” Waite said. “I saw that NPR solicited help [from Twitter users during the first debate]. I said, ‘that’s a great idea, let’s just do it.’ Fortunately I work at a place where those kinds of things can just happen. I can just say, ‘Hey, I want to do this,” and everyone else says, ‘Great. Go!'”
- How it worked. “Every time the candidates said something we’d already checked, we hollered it out,” said Waite. Two-track action: The other team members were preparing full-fledged new Politifact items — so they were watching for anything truly new the candidates said. Meanwhile, Waite posted links to existing Politifact articles that provided factual context to statements that were repetitions from earlier speeches (which was most of what the candidates said last night). Waite also updated the Twitter community on their fact-checking progress for new statements, such McCain’s assertion that Obama had voted to spend $3 million on an overhead projector at a planetarium in Chicago.
- Challenges. “The speed was intense!” So too was the level of multitasking require. Waite kept seven or eight Web browser tabs open all at once just to manage the Twitter side of their coverage.
- Results. Politifact picked up about 200 new Twitter followers during the debate — a 50% increase in the size of their total Twitter posse to date. While that may not sound like a lot to many people in mainstream media, and even though when I interviewed him Waite hadn’t yet checked to see if Twitter drove much traffic to the Politifact site, he considers Twitter followers to be an especially useful and influential community worth cultivating.
- Yes, they’ll do it again. Politifact will be live-tweeting next week’s presidential debate. “I don’t think I have a choice at this point! The response we got was so overwhelming that I think a Twitter mob would come find me if we didn’t do it!”
- Be prepared. The database nature of Politifact made it especially easy to find and post links to relevant articles fast. Waite offers other tips for news organizations and others that may wish to offer live Twitter coverage that goes beyond observation and commentary to providing factual context.
Meanwhile, on NPR: In response to my earlier post about live fact-checking during debates, NPR social media strategist Andy Carvin wrote in to let me know that during the VP debate last week, “NPR did a fact-checking party on Twitter. We challenged Twitter users to find primary sources that could be used to fact-check specific claims by Biden and Palin, then tweet the URL plus the hashtag #factcheck. Our reporters then went through the tweets to see which ones seemed credible, then worked them into our fact-checking coverage throughout the night.”
NPR also made a similar effort to crowdsource fact-checking via Twitter last night, too. (Follow NPRpolitics on Twitter.)
I’m glad to see some news orgs making smart use of social media to both crowdsource fact-checking and engage communities. Well done, Politifact and NPR!
(Special thanks to Tom Vilot for audio editing.)
