The paper has embedded three Google Docs spreadsheets listing stories in progress over on its live blog. The assigned reporter's name and a link to his or her Twitter handle is listed alongside a short description of each story.
Not all stories are included on the list, of course; exclusives and embargoed content is kept private to protect both sources and the paper from competitors. (On Monday, for instance, The Guardian left off mention of a developing scandal involving UK defense secretary Liam Fox.)
"If we tell people where we're headed they can point out important aspects to cover," Roberts says. "Likewise, if we're missing a story they can tell us early enough, instead of moaning about it the next day."
When asked if he is concerned about opening up access to competing papers, Roberts says the potential advantages far outweighed any edge the paper would be giving competitors. "We're [already] getting a lot of help from Twitter," he says. "Some of our best sources are [readers] who see what we're doing and help us along."
Part of the beauty of Twitter is that readers and reporters can now quickly connect without clogging up the latter's inboxes. "If we put up every reporter's email address we'd get a lot more pushback [from staff]; their inboxes would fill up quite quickly," Roberts says. "Twitter allows us to pick out the good things and ignore the daft ones."
Roberts says it has attracted a “surprising amount of interest” thus far. "We’ve had hundreds and hundreds of people get in touch," he says. "Three or four concrete story ideas have developed.”