New ways to connect with ‘Consider the Source’

In an ongoing effort to make our “follow the money” coverage of this year’s election more social, we’re excited to announce two new ways that you can join our community online: A new Tumblr dedicated to tracking the cash behind the election, and a Twitter hashtag for our series: #source2012.

We’ll be working in collaboration with our partners at the nonprofit, nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics on both new initiatives. Our “Consider the Source” Tumblr will be jointly updated throughout each day with the best — and sometimes just funny — money and politics reporting from around the Web. Our goal is to use the new blog as an interactive diary as we speed toward November, highlighting the influence of political contributions while soliciting input from our community.

We want to create an interactive forum where data and multimedia journalism meet discussion and citizen insight in a way that builds on context and conversation throughout the race. With the help of the Public Insight Network, we’ll be regularly asking questions about what you’re seeing in your area, and how the outside money may be impacting your opinions as the election rolls on.

Another way we aim to help achieve that goal is by stepping up our coverage on Twitter. Be sure to follow reporter Michael Beckel (@mjbeckel), along with iWatch (@iWatch) and OpenSecrets (@OpenSecretsDC), to get the latest news on who’s spending what, where they’re spending it, and why it matters to you.

Particularly, you can follow our Consider the Source coverage by joining us on the #source2012 hashtag. We’ll be including it in all our tweets around the money race, so you can easily see what’s new and join in on the conversation. If you have a question about money and the election, or have something you’d like to share, please tweet it using #source2012 and we’ll get back to you.

Of course, you can also “like” our Politics coverage to get our latest investigations straight to your Facebook news feed, and even circle us on Google+ for further discussion.

Questions? Comments? Feel free to email me at cgoins[at]publicintegrity[dot]org, or send me a note on Twitter: @colegoins.

In the meantime, be sure to add us on Tumblr and stay tuned for more in-depth election coverage right here on iWatchNews.org.