WSJ is looking for help with making their labor intensive tasks more automated

[Chris Arndt]

Phil Brinkman, of the Wisconsin State Journal, is looking for help with making their labor intensive workflow into a more automated process for fall election coverage.

Will post what I received below. Thought I'd pass it along to the group in case anyone is interested. I got the impression that they'd pay something...

~Chris

"Every year at election time, we have to set up an elaborate spreadsheet for entering election results, then sorting those results and finally presenting them in a form that works for the paper and online. And every year, I spend way too much time putting this together since no one here really has the expertise to set this up in a clean, easy-to-use format.

 

Basically, I’m looking to improve on the Google Sheet we create for each election in which reporters manually enter election results.

 

Our system works, but it takes an inordinate amount of time to assemble the database for each election and customize the formulas for each race depending, for example, on how many candidates are running for each office or whether voters are electing people for one or two seats.

 

What I’d like is a robust, easy-to-use form that communicates with a database where all I have to do is dump in the offices and candidates up for election and the number of precincts involved, and where my reporters could just enter the votes and precincts counted, and then have it spit out the finished results in order and prepared for print.

 

Before I embark on this for the April 3 election, I thought I’d see if you or anyone over there had any ideas. I’m looking for a someone who is good at working with non-computer folks to help us create an expandable, adaptable online tool for reporting election results."

 

If you want more details, contact him at PBri...@madison.com