A recent
post from the Nieman Journalism Lab, which is a project of the national Nieman Foundation at Harvard, features a new app that Minnpost developed.
The new
Bill Explorer tool allows “readers to visualize and dive into the issues that were big at the state capitol,” it states.
It’s a spinoff of other “bill-tracker applications that a number of news organizations, watchdog groups--not to mention state legislatures and Congress--have developed to give people a sense of what their elected officials are up to.”
Director of news technology Kaeti Hinck is quoted, saying that the program needs to show value for both experts and laymen. “Our primary audience is civic-minded people who care about state politics in Minnesota. A majority of our readers come to MinnPost for our politics and policy coverage--it’s our bread and butter," she says in the piece.