Journalism.co.uk is celebrating the 5th birthday of mySociety.org by talking to one of its originators, Francis Irving, and asking the question: How can journalists make use of mySociety’s sites? This is his answer:

Many journalists already use our sites, both nationally and locally.

We have numerous email alerts on all our sites, that send you custom information about things that you are interested in.

These are all great ways to have leads for stories pushed to you: subscribe to alerts for MPs in your area on TheyWorkForYou, and sign up to HearFromYourMP; do a search on TheyWorkForYou, and sign up to be emailed when new items appear with that search term (e.g. ‘climate change’).

WhatDoTheyKnow has email alerts for new FOI requests made to public authorities – sign up for ones that you are interested in, or that are in your area. You can also sign up to keyword alerts. Sign up to be emailed about new problem reports in your area on FixMyStreet (Ed – or set up RSS feeds)

It’s also useful for journalists to tell readers about our sites as something that they can do after reading a story, rather than just forgetting about it. For example, if you write a story about potholes mention FixMyStreet, so people can report potholes that they hate. If you do a story about a vote in parliament, get people to look it up themselves via TheyWorkForYou.

Posted by Alex Lockwood