The Palin Emails: How You, Too, Can Work for the NYT or Washington Post (For Free)

A great experiment in crowd-sourced journalism? Or laziness?

The Washington Post and New York Times are asking readers to help sort through 24,000 email messages from Sarah Palin's half-term as governor of Alaska.

Which raises the question:

"Don't you folks get paid to do this work yourself?"

That gentle critique, posted on a Times story about the request for help by reader Brandon West, of Brooklyn, summarizes the chief objection to the Times' and Post's crowd-sourced approach to reporting on the documents.

On the one hand, reading through a novella-length collection of "you betchas" will be a horrible task for any but the most masochistic researcher. It's understandable that the newspapers would seek help from anywhere they could get it. (Maybe they should look for S&M fans on Craigslist. Or call on Huffington Post bloggers.)

But asking for help on the grueling task could also be construed as … how to put this gently? Lazy. Trolling through boring documents so everyone else doesn't have to is exactly what reporters are paid to do.

A more generous read of the situation? Both news organizations are only formalizing a concept as old as news itself: following up on tips. Neither paper is inviting its readers to write articles about the documents. And neither has expressed any intent of publishing readers' tips without checking them out.

In one sense, asking for readers' help could be seen as a great example of participatory democracy — a way of acknowledging that public records belong to everyone. It means everyday Americans, and not just members of Palin's "lamestream media," can help decide what's newsworthy.

It also means every citizen can cringe at her syntax, firsthand.

The Associated Press and other organizations requested the documents in 2008, when Palin was named John McCain's running mate. (Speedy response, there, Alaska).

In an internal memo posted by Poynter.com's Jim Romenesko, the AP said it would not post the records for the public but would actually — get this — go through them and report its findings. With no help from regular Joes.

How elitist.

(Full disclosure: Your humble correspondent worked at The AP for many years and holds it in high esteem. When I worked there we sometimes hired journalism students to help with major projects like this one. They tended to do an amazing job, and the AP paid them. What a bunch of suckers we were.) 

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