News used to mean that the reporter would dig up information after hours of searching and report what they found to the audience. This is no longer the case with such sites as maplight.org. The site gathers information that would take days to find and aggregates it all for people to use how they want. I love learning more about politics and this is one way to follow the money trail. Having the information alone would be great but this site has an open API, application programming interface, that allows people to take information a step further. I don’t have to wait for the next Michael Moore movie to find out how much each politician is taking. The site only collects information that is available to the public. I believe that the campaign contributions that are shown are a mere fraction of what politicians get. Either way it is a step in the right direction. Knowing for example that Dave Reichert (R) WA-8 repeatedly gets money from Aflac to vote against health bills can inform my decision when it comes time to vote.
I poked around Maplight for a while and found an old bill that has impacted many people in the United States. House Resolution 4411 which is more commonly known as the Internet Gambling Prohibition and Enforcement Act. Jim McDermott (D) WA-7 was given over $20,000 by professional poker players and others to vote no. Astonishingly guess which way he voted. Why no of course. Had I not read the article that said to check out Maplight I would not have known about the legislator that used to represent me (Reichert) and currently represents me (McDermott).
The article about Newsmixer got me excited about the evolution of journalism. The premise of more user-generated content had my attention. When visiting the site I felt a little overwhelmed. There seemed to be too much content. Paragraphs in the article had questions and answers linked to a comment bubble on the side which was quite distracting. On the other side there was a long list of “quips” about the article. At the bottom there was a space for comments on the article as a whole. I felt bombarded with words, words and more words. I think the smart people at Northwestern outsmarted themselves here. I like user-generated content but not when it takes away from the original article or news story.
Newsmixer and Maplight are just two sites out of millions that are coming up with new ways to serve up content. Good or bad, the Internet is changing our perceptions of journalism and politics. User-generated content and the use of open API’s will become the norm in the future.
Questions:
1) What are your thoughts on sites like Maplight.org that show voting records and campaign contributions?
2) How would you change Newsmixer to be more user-friendly?
3) What are your thoughts about politics being more transparent?
Bajook's Blog 