Today I’m announcing the launch of a new Help Me Investigate project.

Help Me Investigate: Networks aims to make it easier to investigate public interest questions by providing resources and support, links to investigations across the web, and most importantly: a community.

The project is launching with a focus on 3 areas: Education, Health and Welfare. We’ll be providing tips from practising journalists, updates on ongoing investigations, and useful documents and data.

The existing site blog will continue to provide general advice on investigative journalism.

A launchpad and gathering place

This is an attempt to build a scalable network of journalists, developers and active citizens who are passionate about public interest issues.

Although we’re starting with a focus on three of those, if anyone is willing to manage sites covering other areas, including geographical ones, we may be able to host those too (and some are already being planned).

Unlike the original Help Me Investigate, most investigations will not take place on the HMI:Network sites – instead taking place on other blogs, or through private correspondence -although the tips, documents and data gathered in those investigations will be shared on the site.

How people are contributing

Different people are contributing to the project in different ways.

• Journalists and bloggers who need help with getting answers to a question (extra eyes on data, legwork), or finding the questions themselves, are using the network as a place to connect.
• Journalism tutors are tapping into the network for class projects.
• Journalism students and graduates who want to explore a public interest issue are using it as a place to find others, get help, and publish what they find.

If you want to join in or find out more, please email me on paul@helpmeinvestigate.com or message me on Twitter @paulbradshaw. Or just tell someone about the project. They might find it useful.

Meanwhile, in the following days I’ll be publishing a series of posts about what I learned from the first version of Help Me Investigate, and how that has informed this new project.