Earlier this week, Professor Herbert Lowe presented us with the opportunity to participate in gathering information for the non-profit newsroom, ProPublica. His quiet smirk gave the impression that it was not just an opportunity – it was an assignment. Luckily, it turned out to be a pretty an enjoyable one.
According to its website, ProRepublica is investigating how much money super PACs (political action committees) are spending on political races, specifically the 2012 Republican race. The amount of money contributed to various campaigns is kept track of by television networks who air the advertisements. The assignment was to visit one of the local Milwaukee television markets and get copies of super PAC spending from the public file.
Together with Diana Voigt and Heather Ronaldson, I went to the local CBS affiliate to seek the requested information. We approached the front desk requesting the public file and the receptionist quickly phoned someone to help us. In less than a minute, we were escorted to a small room with a filing cabinet where we were presented with the PAC information CBS had. CBS only had information on the super PACs Restore Our Future (pro-Romney) and Red White and Blue Fund (pro-Santorum).
The CBS employee offered to make us copies of the information for the lovely price of 20 cents a page. Upon returning to campus, we scanned and emailed the copies to Daniel Victor at ProPublica as directed.
I really enjoyed doing this assignment. It felt very official and made me even more comfortable knowing that I would potentially doing things similar to this after graduation (at least at some point). So I guess Professor Lowe was right; this was a great opportunity. A opportunity to visit CBS, spend time with my fellow journalism students outside of the classroom and, interestingly enough, see an imitation Wheel of Fortune wheel. I'm still not quite sure what that prop was doing in the room with the public file though...
According to its website, ProRepublica is investigating how much money super PACs (political action committees) are spending on political races, specifically the 2012 Republican race. The amount of money contributed to various campaigns is kept track of by television networks who air the advertisements. The assignment was to visit one of the local Milwaukee television markets and get copies of super PAC spending from the public file.
Together with Diana Voigt and Heather Ronaldson, I went to the local CBS affiliate to seek the requested information. We approached the front desk requesting the public file and the receptionist quickly phoned someone to help us. In less than a minute, we were escorted to a small room with a filing cabinet where we were presented with the PAC information CBS had. CBS only had information on the super PACs Restore Our Future (pro-Romney) and Red White and Blue Fund (pro-Santorum).
The CBS employee offered to make us copies of the information for the lovely price of 20 cents a page. Upon returning to campus, we scanned and emailed the copies to Daniel Victor at ProPublica as directed.
I really enjoyed doing this assignment. It felt very official and made me even more comfortable knowing that I would potentially doing things similar to this after graduation (at least at some point). So I guess Professor Lowe was right; this was a great opportunity. A opportunity to visit CBS, spend time with my fellow journalism students outside of the classroom and, interestingly enough, see an imitation Wheel of Fortune wheel. I'm still not quite sure what that prop was doing in the room with the public file though...