Providing context to government and politics reporting
Many newsrooms crank out a steady flow of government and politics stories. Behind the daily stories is a lot of history and context. How might newsrooms better organize their publishing to provide this background information? How should that background information be organized to support the casual audience who is trying to catch up? How should it be organized to serve the “political junkies” who want to see how all of the pieces connect?
Continuing our research into how journalism can better support democratic life, for this project we will partner with Govpack, a new project to help newsrooms to enrich their with structured information about the people and organizations who appear in those stories. This is a design research project, where students will interview stakeholders, generate and test prototype concepts, and summarize their work in a report to the GovPack team to help guide their development of this toolkit.
Students accepted to this project team will work with the Govpack team to develop and execute a design research plan capturing the desires and concerns of both the news audience and the publishers and reporters who might use Govpack as part of their news publishing system. They’ll end the quarter by producing a research report which Govpack can use to guide their ongoing development.