Slate is asking its readers to submit juicy primary documents: "White House memos, wiretap transcripts, financial disclosure forms, college transcripts, wills, e-mails, police reports, pending regulations, expense account filings—anything sufficiently piquant to interest the lay public," Timothy Noah explained Thursday. Since Noah acknowledged that The Smoking Gun was an inspiration for the idea, Gelf asked TSG founder William Bastone what he thought of the new Slate feature. In an email, Bastone replied to explain why he welcomes the competition, but is wary of audience participation:

We've always enjoyed Tim Noah's work and expect this will be equally compelling. And we're happy to see that he gives us a nod along with the Harper's section and the old Memo of the Month feature [from Washington Monthly]. We're all for the competition, but I'd be wary of asking the audience to send in documents (something we've never done in our nine years). In the hands of the wrong people, PhotoShop can be a very dangerous thing…

Noah seems to have that same fear in mind; he wrote, "Please state where you got the document; if you're cagey about that, I won't use it. We won't run any documents whose provenance is unknown."