A new link on the KSMU homepage called “Bill Tracker” hopes to easily inform Missouri citizens on the legislative session. KSMU’s Theresa Bettmann spoke with its creators to find out more about this statewide resource.
http://ozarkspub.vo.llnwd.net/o37/KSMU/audio/mp3/keeping-missouri-legislation-just-click-away_77275.mp3
It’s been just over a week since the launch of the online tool, created by St. Louis Public Radio and modeled after a similar project created by MinnPost in Minnesota. Brent Jones, the data and visualization specialist with St. Louis Public Radio and the Beacon, says the hope with this user-friendly site is to further engage Missourians.
“What we wanted to do was make it easy for people to find out what bills might affect them and where they are in the legislative process. And then also be able to get some context around those. We’ve provided a title and summary for each bill that we have in it,” Jones says.
In addition to the summaries, many bills may have stories linked with them to give readers more depth into specific topics, Jones says. Although he doesn’t currently have hard numbers on traffic to the site, Jones says the social media response has been positive.
“I know that it has been mentioned quite a bit on Twitter. There’s been a lot of conversation about it on Twitter and on Facebook. More than I was expecting. It’s been interesting to see people sort of discover it,” says Jones.
