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Documenting Hate

A ProPublica-led Coalition to Gather Stories

of Hate Crimes and Bias Incidents

Rachel Glickhouse, Partner Manager

@riogringa

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How it started

  • Saw anecdotal spike in hate incidents after the 2016 election
  • Reporting on poor hate crimes data by ProPublica and AP
  • Received grant to investigate hate crimes
  • Used Electionland model of a distributed collaborative network

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Timeline

Early Nov. 2016: Electionland

Mid-Nov. 2016: Initial reporting

Dec. 2016: Recruitment of launch partners

Jan. 2017: Launch with core group of national partners

Feb. 2017: Onboard sign-ups and recruitment

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We created a nationwide reporting network.

  • 98 local newsrooms
  • 36 national newsrooms
  • 17 college newspapers
  • 10 ethnic media newsrooms

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What We Ask of Partners

  • Vet point of contact
  • Newsroom buy-in
  • Join Slack
  • Logo
  • Publish submissions form
  • Inform us about project-related work

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Newsrooms help us gather tips

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We built a database

The incidents in the database come from a crowdsourcing form, civil rights groups, news articles, social media and police reports.

Journalists help us authenticate and report on these incidents.

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We share records requests with partners

We sent FOIAS requesting hate crime numbers and incident reports directly from police.

We also asked each state if and how they train police on hate crimes.

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What We’ve

Done So Far

  • Collected 5,100+ tips.
  • Recruited 140+ partner newsrooms.
  • Authenticated 760 incidents.
  • Reported 120+ stories.

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What We Offer

Partners

  • Tips database and public records
  • Weekly newsletter
  • Chat with journalists covering this beat
  • Story promotion on website/social
  • Trainings
  • One-on-one collaboration with ProPublica

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How We Organized It

  • Email onboarding + newsletter
  • Slack + Slackbot
  • Onboarding documents housed on Slack
  • Private database built on Django
  • Newsapps
  • MuckRock
  • Videoconferencing

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What We Learned

The most productive partners are those with an engaged reporter/editor working the beat.

When you have no formal agreement and few incentives, the more content you have to offer, the better.

Not everyone is going to find a story.

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What We Learned

Busy news cycles and newsroom turnover are disruptive.

Pitching helps, but the best work will come from those willing and able to do the work.

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Advice

  • Iterate.
  • Grow your offerings.
  • Model desired behavior.
  • Go for quality rather than quantity.

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