Posted by
smays on Tuesday, June 23rd 2009
Text message “nysenate marriage” or “nysenate Adams” or “nysenate S427″ to 41411 and get back a list of relevant bills or a short description of the bill in question right to your cell phone.
“It’s part of the burgeoning Open NY Senate initiative, and while developer Nathan Freitas admits that the trial is proof-of-concept and will likely only appeal to the wonkiest of state government nerds, it’s a demonstration of what parsed, searchable legislative data makes possible. The ultimate goal, says Freitas, is to make finding out what’s happening in government “as easy as looking up sports scores.” Might be useful the next time you’re trying to settle a bar bet over what Albany is up to.” [techPresident]
That part about appealing to only the “wonkiest of state government nerds” had a lot to do with our pulling the plug on our streaming of debate audio (Come on, you guys know we love you but House and Senate debate?).
I think our friends at GovWatch have something like this. I’ll try to get some mic time with B. J. or Amanda over at GovWatch and see what they’re planning for the next session in Missouri. And how long before we see some kind of iPhone app?
Categorized in
Technology
Posted by
smays on Tuesday, June 23rd 2009
Jeff Jarvis’ biggest fear in the death of metro papers is “the vacuum that will be left in coverage of state capitols.”
“Unless your governor is a former movie star or pro wrestler or client of prostitutes, they don’t get much - enough - attention. And even when it does get covered, there’s no obvious and endemic advertising support. Capital coverage was the gift of broccoli from news organizations and no one’s likely to bring that dish to the new news potluck.”
I fear that Mr. Jarvis is right. Covering state government ain’t sexy. I doubt many bloggers will jump in and fill the void that would be left if our larger newspapers stopped covering the statehouse.
Categorized in
Newspapers
Posted by
smays on Thursday, June 11th 2009
That’s my working title for a list of the best movies dealing with politics and government. (I might have to narrow that later) If you’d like to help me with this, leave a comment and a brief explanation of why you think this movie should be on the list. Here’s a bunch of lists to help you get started. Okay, in no particular order (I’ll add IMDB links later)
- Mr. Smith Goes to Washington
- Dave
- True Colors
- The Candidate
Categorized in
Uncategorized
Posted by
smays on Tuesday, June 9th 2009
At the end of the 2009 session of the Missouri General Assembly we brought down the curtain on Legislature.com. Since 2002 (maybe 2001) we’ve been streaming and archiving audio of debate from the Missouri House and Senate. It was a pretty pricey service at $750 a year. But even at that premium, we were just breaking even. So now what?
Well, for starters, we’ve opened up the archives so anyone can go back and listen to some 3:00 a.m. filibuster from 2004. Cool, huh? I think we always overestimated the amount of interest in listening to archived debate audio. But hey, it might have some historial value.
Frankly, one of the best parts of Legislature.com was the domain itself. We couldn’t beleive it when we discovered it was still available. So we’ll hang on it (until someone offers us a boat load of money for it), but what do we do here?
There’ no shortage of coverage of the state legislature. Just down the hall is the Missourinet newsroom and those guys (and lady) do a great job of reporting on state government. As do a few other news organizations, so we don’t need to reinvent that wheel, even if we could.
But we don’t have to come up with an answer today. And we welcome suggestions. Just hit the comment link and tell us what you think we should do here.
