New journalism: more twists

Here's Wired on those sites that give us access to background on politicians: Web Mashups Turn Citizens Into Washington's Newest Watchdogs. It covers sites like Congresspedia, OpenSecrets, Follow the Money, and MapLight.

Tread carefully, politicians -- concerned citizens are watching your every move on the web. Their tools? Custom data mashups that use public databases to draw correlations between every vote cast and every dollar spent in Washington.

Roy Greenslade highlights a posting from online political cartoon maven Darryl Cagle, who says the Web is changing everything for cartoonists, and not necessarily in a good way. From Cagle's Newspapers and cartoonists wandering blindly, in the Statesman-Journal:

Every day I read something from journalists obsessing about the future of print. The internet is gobbling up newspaper readers and advertisers. The future looks bleak for ink on paper as newspapers respond by downsizing, degrading their product and hastening their own demise. There seems to be a generally accepted axiom that the internet is the future for journalism. Columnists are transforming into multimedia bloggers and cartoonists feel pressure to animate their political cartoons. It makes perfect sense to chase the shifting audience, but the move to the internet doesn't make much business sense.
...I run a popular Web site and I'm the cartoonist for MSNBC.com, but I still make my living selling cartoons that are printed in ink on paper from traditional clients who actually pay. I often get calls from political cartoonists who are starting to animate their cartoons, asking where they can sell their animations; my answer is, "nowhere."