Sludge | Shining a Light on Shady Special Interests
We’re excited to formally introduce Sludge, a Newsroom focused on the the shadowy ways that special interests have captured America’s political system. Its muckraking team is solely beholden to readers who share its passion for uncovering hidden networks and conflicts of interest that exert outsize influence on policymakers — not appeasing the Capitol Hill cocktail circuit.
Sludge’s Newsmaker team members are pioneers for promoting greater transparency into lobbying practices, and boast deep pedigrees in investigative journalism and data analysis. Their stories will look beyond the numbers — the raw data housed in dense, arcane public records, lobbying forms and campaign contributions — to connect the dots and expose deep, systemic corruption where it exists. Sludge’s founders, David Moore and Donny Shaw, previously created and ran OpenCongress.org, a leading project in digital government transparency, from 2007–2013. During that time, it was the most-visited non-profit website in the world for tracking bills and money in the U.S. Congress.
Putting Lobbyists on Notice
It’s no secret that a limited number of actors has long exercised an outsized influence over legislation and policy in Washington, D.C. — and that it can be a prohibitively expensive beat for traditional news outlets to consistently cover. Commissioning labor-intensive investigations into widespread governmental corruption, which can take months (if not years) to properly report, simply doesn’t jive with the advertiser-driven realities that heavily inform editorial agendas at most news outlets. There’s depressingly little room for deep-dive, investigative pieces in today’s page-views-at-all-costs media landscape that drives most outlets, and that’s to say nothing of the influence advertisers or other third parties can wield if they worry they’ll be adversely impacted by the findings of a certain investigation.
Sludge’s founders see Civil’s blockchain-based, ad-free nature as the antidote to this longstanding hurdle. Keeping the proverbial middleman out of the equation will enable direct reader support of their mission: introducing more transparency into — and general awareness of — lobbyist influence. Sludge’s ultimate goal is to produce journalism that helps to change the way the lawmaking process works, to prevent special interests from exploiting a closed-off system without due public scrutiny.
“We need to open people’s eyes to the reality that lobbyist influence on policymaking is often not consistent with democratic inputs — and in many cases is actively hindering a democratic process. To do so, we must effect systemic change in a more widely-informed way,” said Sludge co-founder David Moore. He cited the recently passed tax bill as a prime example of interest-driven legislation that doesn’t necessarily serve the public’s best interests. “Clearly, it was largely written by lobbyists. Most members of Congress were unusually forthright that they didn’t even have time to read it before voting on it. That’s an abhorrent state for a representative democracy, and one we plan to address head on.”
Moore said one way to judge Sludge’s success will be by whether lobbyists face added scrutiny in future hearings. “A telecommunications lobbyist should not be able to simply present their side of the story — for example, on net neutrality. “We want to make them accountable, and to make it impossible for the ‘business as usual’ model to carry on unimpeded,” he continued. According to Moore, this means exposing citizens to lobbyists’ efforts early in the process, and giving them the tools to contact their Congressional representatives well ahead of a given hearing.
The name Sludge may elicit a less-than-positive association — and that’s precisely what Moore and his team intend. When it comes to special interests, we have stuck our collective heads in the sand for too long. It’s time to confront these ugly realities — including the actors behind them — and how they’ve manipulated the system to bend to their interests time and again, often to the detriment of public welfare.
While there has rightly been fatigue with a seemingly never-ending string of depressing headlines in recent years, Sludge is introducing an action-oriented form of journalism that aims to drive real, systemic change. If you’re interested in learning more and previewing some of the content its team is working on, visit Sludge and sign up for its mailing list. If you’re interested in writing for Sludge, get in touch — they’re hiring.
