When ProPublica first launched our Recovery Tracker last summer, it proved to be an important resource for journalists and others to use to find out how stimulus funds were being spent in their county or state. And because it was so popular, we updated the information in the Tracker each time new stimulus data became available. This week we published Recovery Tracker 3.0 -- the next generation in our effort to show where every dollar of the $787 billion Recovery Act is going.
Jennifer LaFleur is ProPublica's director of computer assisted reporting, and she's been the leading force in pulling all of this complicated information together. We talked to her about the new additions to Recovery Tracker, how she compiles and "tweaks" the data, why our information is more complete than the government's and what are the newest developments in computer-assisted reporting.
Articles discussed in this show:
