Web Mashups Turn Citizens Into Washington's Newest Watchdogs

by Actual News Geezer | April 26, 2007 at 12:46 pm | 323 views | add comment | 0 recommendations

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You can already feel the impact user-generated news will make in the upcoming 2008 US elections. This article in Wired Mag highlights a few of the players but ignores several others.

I'm thinking The Examiner, NewAssignment.net, Cleveland-Park (a community we've been introduced to thanks to one of our newest of News Wranglers, Bill Adler), etc.

I don't think the apparatchiks' even have a clue how this will change things, but there's lots of evidence even now that it will. Read this article to get a sense.

Sites like Maplight.org, Opensecrets.org and Follow the Money, along with wiki-based political reporting resources like Congresspedia, are increasingly giving ordinary citizens the ability to easily document the flow of special-interest money and how it influences the legislature.

These new tools are providing an unprecedented level of transparency, exposing patterns of influence that otherwise would have remained invisible to ordinary citizens.