Speak Out!

By: Rich Kane

Amidst the glut of political bloviating on the Web and other news media, where it often seems that whoever yells the loudest (or TYPES WITH CAPS LOCK ON) wins the argument, simple information about our elected leaders can be hard to come by. How they vote on important issues, for instance.

A new app from Scripps hopes to change that, not only supplying users with statistics on what bills their senators and congressional representatives are voting on, but how they’re voting, and what’s being said in the press about them.

Dubbed Podium—and available for downloading at tothepodium.com—the free app lets you follow topics and bills you’re interested in as they wind through the legislative maze. You can also find out where your favorite politician’s money comes from. No clue who your senator or representative is? Podium is location-based, so wherever you are, their name will pop up.

According to Bo Schuerman, Scripps digital solutions group director, the app is designed to be used broadly including outside of the Scripps markets. “We aggregate content and politician information across the country regardless of a Scripps market so all consumers can benefit,” he said.

Schuerman said they took an iterative approach to quickly bring the product to market in less than three months, and leveraged both an internal product team as well as outside experts to build out the app. Podium is only available for the iPhone right now, but Schuerman said an Android version is in the works.

Podium went live in October, just in time for the November elections and the arrival of the 114th U.S. Congress—perfect timing, as a flurry of new bills are expected to be introduced by the newly-empowered Republican majority.

“We hear a lot from our readers and TV viewers about the struggle to be heard and staying informed,” said Schuerman. “They want to know what these people are doing in Washington. So we wanted to be on that stage, and that’s why we created Podium. It’s about citizen empowerment—a simple way for people to see what their politicians in D.C. are doing.”

Schuerman particularly likes Podium’s push-notification ability to let users know about pending legislation before it becomes fodder for the angry-talk-show-host circuit, so they can get out in front of issues instead of reading about them after they’re voted on. Representatives can also be emailed directly from the app, so they—or, more likely, their interns—will know when a particular topic is stirring up passions. The app also pulls in news stories from various sources—not just Scripps.

 “Information coming out of D.C. can be very cryptic, so we want to summarize things in a layman’s way, and be unbiased in an objective way,” he said.