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About Help Me Investigate

Help Me Investigate is a website that aims to help those who want to investigate questions in the public interest. The site was launched in July 2009 with funding from Channel 4’s 4iP fund and Screen West Midlands.

Investigations undertaken by users of the site include the uncovering of a £2.2 million overspend on Birmingham City Council’s websitefalse claims by publishers of a free newspaper; the worst places for parking fines; the real average cost of weddingslegal issues surrounding recording council meetingspolice claims of sabotage against Climate Camp protestershow much higher education costs the taxpayerwho is responsible for an advertising screendoes scrapping speed cameras save money? And varying availability of hormonal contraceptive on the NHS

The site was conceived by Paul Bradshaw, developed with Nick Boothand built by Stef Lewandowski. Journalists involved in the site have included Heather BrookeJames Ball and Colin Meek.

In 2010 the site was shortlisted and highly commended for Multimedia Publisher of the Year in the NUJ’s Regional Media Awards, and won ‘Best Investigation’ in the Talk About Local/Guardian Local awards.

In February 2011 the code for the original site was released under an open source licence, while HelpMeInvestigate.com was redirected to the site blog, which provides regular tips on issues .

A new website is currently being built by Philip John. Meanwhile, Paul Bradshaw is building a network of community editors who will focus on specific issues such as health, education, and local government. If you want to get involved, email him on paul@helpmeinvestigate.com

FAQs about the background to Help Me Investigate

Every so often I get asked to answer questions about Help Me Investigate for someone's research project or article. I try to answer these in public so that others can also find the answers if they need to.

If you are doing an article or research into crowdsourcing, you'll find answers to basic questions about the site in these audioboos:?http://audioboo.fm/tag/hmi

There are videos of presentations I've made about the site here:?http://www.bbc.co.uk/journalism/blog/2010/11/event-face-the-future-1.shtml

And here:?

And you can find interviews with me about Help Me Investigate on the Columbia Journalism Review:?http://www.cjr.org/the_news_frontier/q_a_paul_bradshaw_founder_of_h.php?page=1

And, going back a while, at MediaShift (just before the site was due to launch):?http://www.pbs.org/idealab/2009/06/help-me-investigate-paul-bradshaw-on-crowdsourcing-investigative-reporting153.html