Report on our debate coverage practice run

"How can a group of citizen journalists best cover a presidential debate?" That was the question that several dozen of us Off the Busers attempted to answer using the CNN/YouTube debate as our practice run. This update covers what we learned and looks forward to the September 17 GOP debate. Now that we've been through this once, we know what we need for next time. Keep reading, and then email us at [e-mail] to claim a role for the GOP YouTube debate.  

On Monday evening, a few hours before show time, we started assembling in chat rooms devoted to specialized topics, lead by Amanda Michel, Jay Rosen and David Cohn. Questions and ideas were flying all over the place and the pace quickened when the debate began. Inspired individuals picked questions to research, and spawned chat rooms and email threads to facilitate work in small groups. There was also a lot of fun in scattered banter on what was being said in the debate.

Meanwhile, in the debate "Spin Room" itself, two Off the Bus volunteers, Trudi Loh and Kerri Glover, and Zack Exley set up shop to grill journalists, campaign staff and candidates. It was fascinating to be there in person. These campaign journalists are an interesting lot. The herd analogy may be overused, but it sure is accurate. The good people at YouTube/Google kindly set us "above" the herd by placing us onto a big stage overlooking the Spin Room, complete with Google-branded primary color bean bag chairs. We were sitting up there with specially-chosen members of the YouTube community who were also covering the debates from their own diverse citizen/netizen perspectives.

As the Spin Room heated up, we tried to take our lead from Jay, Amanda and David in the chat rooms to gather interviews on the themes they were developing. We also got some fun bits of behind-the-scenes footage.

By the end of night, all of us Off the Busers, spanning at least five time zones, had cobbled together several stories and interviews on diverse topics:

• In the Spin Room Kerri Glover and Trudi Loh got answers from major players--like DNC chairman Howard Dean--on one of our main questions going in: What difference did the citizen's questions make?
• Working across email, chat rooms and phone, Jay Rosen, Jen C., David Cohn, Sarah Cove, Beverly Davis, River Curtis-Stanley, Neil Nagraj, Nikki Summer, and Denise Wheeler combined forces to hunt down some of the people whose questions were asked.  We discovered, among other things, that CNN was asking some to re-shoot their video. Our report made the cover of Huffington Post and started to get picked up at other media sites.
• In the chat rooms, D.L. Gilroy, a writer, teamed up with contributor Chris F., a Net researcher, and they put together the necessary background on Google's rising political profile, which helped explain Monday's debate.
• (Special thanks go to Anne-Marie McReynolds who stayed up all night processing our videos!)
  

As much fun as we had, and as much as we accomplished, it is nevertheless clear that we only just scratched the surface. Our biggest accomplishment was gaining a very clear picture of what we need to do in order to be fully prepared for the next debate.

First of all: We need YOU. On Monday, we had the right size group for a practice run. But now that we know how to structure this kind of operation, we want to scale up to 100 or more volunteers on deck for September 17. We need people to step up to these roles in particular:

• Several volunteers with special skills to staff the event in person. Ideally: two videographers, two (aggressive) interviewers, two video editors/posters and one live blogger/editor to post up interviews and stories as the team gathers them.
• Ten or twenty chat room moderators, who can keep people on-topic and organized, greet newcomers and dole out tasks as they arise.
• Ten wiki "gardeners." Our wiki serves as a centralized information resource to keep things organized. But only some people can use it easily. We need gardeners who can constantly clean up and reorganize the wiki as needed, as well as post items for (the vast majority of) volunteers who are wiki-challenged.
• Ten advance researchers who can dig up information and resources that we can guess will be needed, as well as listings of resources that would be useful to all researchers, such as free online archives.   

We had a lot of fun on Monday--and September 17 is going to be even better. So if you're interested in playing any of those roles on (or leading up to) September 17, please email us at [e-mail].

Thanks for all you did on Monday night. (Especially to Al Cannistraro, Anne-Marie McReynolds, Beverly Rivera Davis, Bonnie Bucqueroux, Chris Fornof, Christine Escobar, D.L. Gilroy, Denise Wheeler, Elaine Hopkins, Gale Walden, Jay Rosen, Jen Clark, Jennifer Bogut, Jennifer Hageman, Jill Bauerle, Jim Anderson, k.t., Karen Coffey, Kerri Glover, Lance Alvis, Lee Westell, Lin Farley, Mark Joyella, Nancy A. Butterfield, Nathan Ketsdever, Neil Nagraj, Nicole Summer, Paul Wilson, River Curtis-Stanley, Robert Sargent, Ross Smith, Saba Kennedy-Washington, Sarah Cohen, Sarah Cove, Sedef Onder, Sheila Condit, Shirley Smith, Simeon Minshew, Steve Greenberg, Sue Peterson, Trudi Loh!)

And thanks for all you're going to do in the future with Off the Bus!

PS: We're always working on several projects at once that could use the help of one or two talented volunteers. Here are some needs we have right now. Please email us at [e-mail] for more info on any of these tasks:

• Two or three people to organize information on the structure and staff of all the presidential campaigns. We're working on posting up org charts of all the campaigns.
  
• A few people to convert the material on our current wiki to a new (and better) wiki that we're launching soon. It would be great if these people became regular stewards of the wiki (or "wiki gardeners").
  
• As many people as we can get to become candidate email list monitors. Here, we just need you to subscribe to all the candidates' email lists and forward us the emails you get that are specific to your local area or state. Email us for more info on how to participate.
• A few people make a list of free resources for tracking candidates' statements and stands.