Wonky web watching

For those of you who can't get enough talking heads, there's a new policy-devoted TV network, but it's not actually on TV.

Fora.tv is YouTube for policy wonks. Fora.tv (the plural of forum, get it?) includes content from a wide variety of national think tanks across the political spectrum. You can find video clips based on subject matter, including both domestic and foreign policy; by content provider; or by region of the world. There is also a cool tool that highlights current headlines from policy-oriented media outlets like Salon and the Wall Street Journal and links to topically related Fora.tv video content.

According to the site:

We deliver discourse, discussions and debates on the world's most interesting political, social and cultural issues and enable our viewers to join the conversation. We provide deep unfiltered content, tools for self expression and the place for the interactive community to gather. There are brilliant ideas, expressed everyday, in public discussions and events, all over the world.

Started by a former C-SPAN executive, the new network has a similar feel, in that the "programs" are unedited. However, they are "chaptered," meaning if you are interested in only one portion of the video, you can find it without watching the entire video. Like YouTube, viewers can rate and comment on the video content, and there are viewer forums for discussion. Perhaps the best feature is that the video clips can be downloaded, so the truly wonky can listen via iPod while hitting the treadmill.

We're gray here at the Forum

Attention policy wonks--here's a new word for you: "Gray literature" is the term of art for publications from sources like the Forum, which produce reports that are not easily found from centralized indices or catalogues. Here's a more official definition:

"Gray or grey literature has long been considered the proverbial needle in the haystack. It is commonly defined as any documentary material that is not commercially published and is typically composed of technical reports, working papers, business documents, and conference proceedings. The greatest challenges involved with these items are the process of identification, since there is limited indexing, and acquisition, since availability is usually marred with uncertainty. Added to this is the absence of editorial control, raising questions about authenticity and reliability."

(Quote from the March 2004 issue of the Association of Research & College Libraries' College & Research Libraries News, via DocuTicker Newsletter.)

For public policy analysts, gray literature is where new, sometimes outlandish, policy ideas can be found; where independent analyses can reveal alternative results; or where partisans can highlight favorable statistical outcomes while ignoring inconvenient ones. The burden is on the reader to decide whether the source is reliable. (Although it should be noted that in today's world this burden is the reader's even if the content is from a mainstream publishing house, newspaper, or peer-reviewed journal.)

Because there's rarely anything black and white about policymaking, the value of gray literature outweighs its limitations for those of us interested in public policy. There are a few online resources where gray literature producers are catalogued. A good place to start is Britain's Grey Literature Network Service. In addition, the New York Academy of Medicine's library website list hundreds of organizations that publish reports. Finally, DocuTicker offers a selection of publications from government agencies, NGOs, think tanks and other public interest organizations.

For our part, until the late 1990's the Forum provided our reports to the Milwaukee Public Library and are catalogued there. Since 1997 we have made most reports available on-line via our website. To ensure you don't miss out on any new findings, become a member; members of the Forum receive copies of our printed reports and are emailed notices when on-line reports are released.

The end of the sound bite?

Have you ever read a story in the newspaper with quote after quote on one side of the issue and just a few on the other side? Have you wondered whether other things were said in support of that other side, but were left out of the story? I guess the smart people at Google have had that experience, too, because they are launching a new feature on Google news that allows the subjects of newspaper articles to comment on them. The comments will be posted next to the original article, but clearly labelled as comments, to prevent confusion.

I'm predicting that if this feature takes off, the practice of media relations will be changed dramatically. Who wouldn't take advantage of an opportunity to "set the story straight" to a global audience? Perhaps knowing that a rebuttal is inevitable, people will speak more persuasively--could it lead to the end of the sound bite? Could nuance and analysis make their way back into journalism? I would imagine very few reporters would want their stories to be susceptible to being overshadowed or made irrelevant by the pursuant comments.

This new feature is certainly an advance in media accountability, with the potential to be much more.

Getting your state budget fix

The policy wonks over at WisPolitics are once again running a state budget blog. The blog follows all the budget hearings and meetings of the JFC (usually live-blogged), as well as most of the press releases by advocacy groups, administrative departments, and state legislators and other officials. It makes Wisconsin's budget deliberations much more transparent for citizens, which is always a good thing, as well as sometimes injecting a bit of humor into too-often dry subject matter, which is a great thing.