Public meetings and beyond

We've been testing participatory media assignments since 2015 — and we'll certainly test more in the future — but, over time, we've found that having a core assignment type helps us focus, and helps Documenters know what to expect. Community coverage of public meetings is core to our mission, so we've honed two types of assignments that work in tandem to produce informative rundowns that anyone can be trained to do. The following steps are rooted in those assignment types—notetaking and live-tweeting—but they're informed by other assignments types that we've tried and tested, including annotating public documents, group data collection, street team event outreach and more. 

Even if your participatory media project isn't based in coverage of public meetings, we hope these four steps can be useful for your work:

Step 1: Selecting and assigning meetings to cover 

Our City Scrapers tool finds dates, times and official records for public meetings and displays them in a list and calendar form. Staff members monitor the list of upcoming meetings and choose which meetings to turn into assignments. This decision might be based on your program’s mission, local relevance, the number of active Documenters or your budget. Some factors to consider when selecting meetings: 

• Are we tracking an issue that came up in a previous meeting?

• Does the agency routinely lack public documentation like minutes and agendas?

• Is the issue or agency timely, newsworthy or especially relevant in public dialogue?

• Is there a media or community partner who could make further use of our reporting? 

Step 2: Selecting community members for civic assignments 

A list of open assignments is sent out to all Documenters every week and they can apply to cover a meeting that interests them. Documenters are often sent to meetings in pairs to create opportunities for connection, collaboration and self-support. Documenters roles could include annotating, live Tweeting, photographing or recording the meeting depending on your program. Typically, many applications are submitted for a single role. Choosing people for assignments is a balancing act: staff should use Documenters’ profiles and personal experience to select roles and ensure those roles reflect local demographics. We consider the following:

• Experience — Does this meeting require someone to have previous experience with an agency?

• Opportunities for new engagement — Might having fresh eyes bring new insights to your team and community of civic reporters?

• Performance — Has this Documenter previously shown thorough thoughtful attention to meetings?

• Opportunities — Could this assignment increase a Documenters' capacity for future assignments/in general

• Meeting relevance — Does this meeting have clear news or informational value for community members?

Step 3: Taking notes and getting paid 

Once a Documenter is approved to take on an assignment, they should receive a confirmation message and any materials they need to complete the assignment. The Documenters Network uses  a custom Google Docs template. A claimed assignment also triggers our payment platform to cue up a payment, which needs to be manually approved by a staff member. Documenters mark their assignment as “complete” on the back end of Documenters.org when they’re finished. They are expected to turn in any assigned work (i.e. notes, photos, audio, annotations, etc)  within 24 hours of the meeting.  

Step 4: Reviewing and publishing notes 

Staff look at the meeting notes to check — to the best of the staff member’s ability — that they are accurate, free of errors and meet the expectations laid out in our training. We always offer feedback. If the notes need significant revision, we send them back to the Documenter with suggestions. Documenters are paid for extra time they spend on edits. We use an internal rating system for notes that helps us track performance and make decisions about future assignments. The ratings are: 

• 1: Cannot be published as is. Submission includes significant factual errors, grammatical errors or omissions. 

• 2: Significant revision required, including rewriting or restructuring. Submission includes factual errors, grammatical errors or omissions.

• 3: Revision required, including some rewriting and/or restructuring. Submission is factually accurate or adequate with few grammatical errors or omissions.

• 4: Light revision required. Submission is factually accurate with few grammatical errors or omissions.

• 5: Little-to-no revision required. Submission is factually accurate with few grammatical errors or omissions.