PoliticsVerbatim.org is a new site from California Watch and Chase Davis. The site will attempt to track every quote, promise and statement made by our two major candidates for governor in California – Democrat Jerry Brown and Republican Meg Whitman.
The search tool allows readers to sort candidate statements by nine different categories – including promises, attacks and vague policy points. If they dodge an issue or a subject, there’s a search category for that, too. Readers can also sort by geography to see where the candidates have been appearing – and what parts of the state they’ve been ignoring.
The site also will include blog posts from Davis, Senior Editor Robert Salladay and Sacramento-based reporter Timothy Sandoval.
The candidates’ statements are sorted by 26 topics – from abortion to welfare.
PoliticsVerbatim launches with about 300 documents and 1,000 excerpts. The site will be adding content daily, scouring news and campaign sites and Twitter and Facebook feeds. They are also encouraging crowd-sourcing from other journalists and readers, and hope to soon create easy ways for readers to upload video and audio files from public campaign events. ...see the site now
