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About ALEC Exposed

This site is built by ordinary people, like you, who are concerned about the excessive influence of corporations on our laws and our lives. 
==Top Ten Ground Rules== 
Identify bills from our collection of bills that appear in your state or in a nearby state. Help us keep it up-to-date. This is a collaborative project and relies on the contributions of citizens on the ground in states throughout the country. Your expertise is welcome and, indeed, completely necessary to make this project effective!

Focus on the most important facets of the bill and be organized in your writing. What is the bill and what does it do? What would it mean for the commonwealth of your state? Who stands to benefit and who stands to lose from this bill? Where has this bill been introduced? What other bills has it been combined with if you have seen it in omnibus-style legislation? Are there ongoing legislative battles surrounding this bill? If this “model” bill has become a “real” bill, how has it impacted you and your state?

These are all important questions to answer when writing wiki entries for bills. If you need an organizational guideline, look to other good SourceWatch and/or Wikipedia entries you have seen in the past and model your contributions after their well-organized contributions. Look, for example at the SourceWatch article on Monsanto.

Don't bury the lead! We ask you to put the important material first, and then the rest in descending order of importance. Don't bury the lead and waste "above-the-fold" space on minutiae.

Focus on the facts. We do not require a "neutral point of view." We are seeking editors concerned about ALEC's efforts to achieve the agenda of big corporations. That said, let the facts speak for themselves and avoid excessive editorializing. The misdeeds of corporations and politicians who serve them generally speak for themselves. 
Be accurate. The standard for adding information to this collaborative site is that it be accurate. 
Cite sources. This site is focused on building core information on ALEC's activities to help the American people understand this organization and to aid journalists and activists. Accordingly, we are seeking primary sources as well as other documentation to build the record of the breadth and depth of ALEC's efforts to rewrite the laws governing our lives and our democracy, in states across the country and in Congress.

Do include pictures and videos and external resources. While we welcome well-researched writing, high-quality pictures and videos never hurt in the attempt to transform a “good” wiki entry into an “exceptional” one. See the Marcellus Shale Sourcewatch page for an example of how YouTube videos were utilized to increase the quality of the page. Also see the extensive "External Resources" and "External Articles" list on that page. Remember that the ultimate goal of this project is to make ALEC Exposed the central research hub for activists and journalists. Informed activism requires informed journalism, and both are central tenets of our democracy. Help be a central figure in making that possible!

Stay engaged and help other stay engaged! Share your work with fellow bloggers, journalists, friends, family, and colleagues through social media websites like Twitter and Facebook. On Twitter, make sure to tag your contributions with the #ALECexposed hash tag so that others in your state and around the country can learn from and hopefully utilize your work! 
Commentary is welcome. The site will include space for additional commentary and discussion, other than within the articles. - IS THIS TRUE? 
Be bold. You are helping to write history.

Top Ten Style Tips

For the most extensive style tips and for a great overview and framework, please read over our SourceWatch Manual of Style.

Add people, names, lobbyists, lobbying firms, politicians and others to SourceWatch that are vital to telling the story of how ALEC has impacted your schools, neighborhoods, cities, universities, states, etc. Link externally to these pages when contributing to ALEC Exposed wiki entries. To do this, use the

An example of a proper external link to a SourceWatch page can be seen below:

<ref>"[http://sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Citizens_United Citizens United]," SourceWatch.org, Accessed May 29, 2011.</ref>

Before starting a new page on SourceWatch, check to see if a page already exists (perhaps the name or corporation you want to create a page for is already mentioned on a different SourceWatch page). If SourceWatch countains nothing on a corporation, politician, organization, lobbying group, etc. that you would like to create an entry for, simply type in that name in the SourceWatch “search” function. A link should appear that says “create this page.”

When doing external citations within the Bill [and/or State] wiki entries, follow the same format for citations as you would follow for linking to SourceWatch. Think back to “footnoting” you used to do or still do for papers in school. Utilize the

<ref>

tag format as seen above. An example of how this format is best utilized can be seen in the sentence below:

[[Dennis Kucinich]], at a March 14, 2011 speech in Madison, WI, said members of the [[Bush Administration]] that launched illegal wars based on lies and oversaw a massive torture apparatus abroad should be tried in front of the International Criminal Court at the Hague.<ref>[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dhV5xxCGiIo], “Rep. Dennis Kucinich engages hundreds at The Barrymore.” YouTube. YouTube.com. Accessed May 29, 2011.</ref>

Shows as:

Dennis Kucinich, at a March 14, 2011 speech in Madison, WI, said members of the Bush Administration that launched illegal wars based on lies and oversaw a massive torture apparatus abroad should be tried in front of the International Criminal Court at the Hague.

Organization counts and can be the difference between keeping and losing a reader. Make sure to use

“==”

signs for sections, and

“===”

and

“====”

signs for subsequent sub-sections. For example, see below:

==Membership==

===Dues===

====Corporate Dues====

====Citizen Dues====

=====Can Citizens Actually Become Members?=====

==Personnel==

This shows as:

Personnel

Make sure to also utilize internal links when applicable. For instance, when referring to a subject page on ALEC Exposed from within the ALEC wiki entries, use the "double bracket"

("[[" and "]]")

symbols. For example,

[[Tort Reform, Corporate Liability and the Rights of Injured Americans]]

becomes Tort Reform, Corporate Liability and the Rights of Injured Americans and

[[Taxes and Budgets]]

shows as Taxes and Budgets. When citing ALEC Exposed pages within SourceWatch articles, do an external link as shown above. An example of how to do that can be seen below:

<ref>Center for Media and Democracy, "[http://www.alecexposed.org/wiki/Workers_Rights, Workers Rights," ALECexposed.org, Accessed May 29, 2011.</ref>

Strive for brevity. Concise, attention-catching writing, journalistic-style, is preferable over long-winded academic-style writing. Avoid run-on sentences.

Strive for style. Think about the writing that you would like to read as someone going to ALEC Exposed and/or SourceWatch for the very first time. Avoid wonky jargon and gear your writing for a general audience, not strictly policy experts.

Consult our "SourceWatch Research Guides" for how to do the meticulous research necessary to create good SourceWatch and/or ALEC Exposed pages.

Multimedia, such as pictures and videos, are a great addition to pages. The easiest way to learn how to embed pictures and videos is to use the formatting utilized on other pages as a model template (you can see it by clicking the "Source" or "Edit" tab). You can also refer to the “Detailed Formatting Tips” section of the “SourceWatch Style Manual” for a quick primer.