The Hunt for Political Information

You hear it time and time again. It seems to be the mantra of every reporter. "Follow the money." When you are a political reporter like Windy March, money can lead to a variety of stories.

In the instance of Mark Jimenez, the money he contributed to the Clinton campaign led to a story of money laundering.

It was very interesting to see the many different sites used in order to comprise a story. While the FEC website seemed to be a given, I was surprised to hear that March uses the IRS website too. It makes sense though once you consider the work the IRS does.

When writing a story about a political candidate, those who give money to a campaign etc the steps are very similar to those of any other sotry.

Pick the subject of interest and research them.

Look for any anomolies in transactions or those surrounding them.

Follow the money. See if people donating money have donated before, if they are registered to vote, if they are donating money to the party they are registered. Also, check to see when/if they have voted.

Use your sources (many of which can be found online for a political reporter). Sites like: http://www.opensecrets.org/, http://moneyline.cq.com/pml/home.do , and http://thomas.loc.gov/ can prove to be very useful.

Opensecrets allows the public to track federal campaign finance records. Moneyline also allows the public to check federal records but can sometimes prove to be easier to use. Thomas.loc.gov can be used to research federal legislation by topic. With loc.gov, you are able to see who voted for what bill and which side of the line they fell on.

There are many sites available not only to reporters but also the public so that people can be aware of what is happening in politics. It helps though as a reporter to have the vast amount of information available regularly so that a story can be written well and useful to the public.

I still marvel at how much information you can find online.