We're seeing some really good efforts which use the Net to get citizens engaged in real governance from the grassroots to the White House. I think the Obama administration will see this really happen, kind of the fire-side chat for the 21st century. Here's a new effort in that direction,...

People are trying to find new ways to fund reporting, particularly investigative reporting.

spot.us offers means by which people in the community can fund reporting via small donations.

Citizens provide tips; then journalists pitch stories to us, and hopefully get funded.

I'm personally interested in Solar power: When...

Hey, this conference at CUNY two weeks ago is a really big deal, people getting serious about new ways of doing news, and paying for it.

Jeff Jarvis talks about what's next

So I proposed a problem to solve: What if a city, say Philadelphia, loses its paper tomorrow....

For a real-time view of voting issues, check out
http://search.twitter.com/search?q=votereport or similarly http://election.twitter.com/topic?t=%23votereport

I think it's genuinely beautiful.

Haven't seen big problems, but some real issues, and if you're caught up in a problem situation, your day is no fun.

Also, take a look at

A lot of people figure that the future of news belongs to big national publications, and many hyperlocal sites.

Students at the UC Berkeley journalism school are doing great work, recently starting six hyperlocal sites focusing on Bay Area communities including:

• missionlocal.org in SF's Mission District
• oaklandnorth.org in Rockridge and...

It's better to prevent voting problems than to try to fix them after the fact.

I'm not talking about "voter fraud," like where nonexistent humans are registered. That's a rarity, and generally a hoax.

Bigger problems usually involve efforts to prevent legitimate voters from voting. For example, voters might be...

from rhyen on Vimeo.

• Barack Obama for President
• Jackie Speier for Congress
• NO on California Proposition 8 (keep the government out of our bedrooms)

Politicians, particularly Congressmen, tell me that the mass form-letter emails they get, from unknown parties, aren't useful.

What they want are emails from constituents, preferably not form letters, but that might be okay.

Well, looks like that might already be available at a newish site, You2Gov.com:

At You2Gov.com, registered users...

(or... A Nerd Stands up for Veterans)

Hey, Veterans returning from overseas, particularly wounded ones, are treated pretty badly by the Bush White House.

Here's where I document a lot of the details, based on my work with the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America. (They...

Hey, the folks at the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America are doing a great job supporting the troops, now they help us figure out how politicians are doing helping them.

From their flag lapel pins to their yellow ribbon bumper stickers, every politician in America wants you to believe...

The folks at the Center for Media and Democracy have done incredible work documenting fake grassroots or "astroturf" groups.

Here, they're helping protects the rights of all Americans to exercise their right to vote.

They are completely non-partisan.

The non-profit, non-partisan Center for Media and Democracy (CMD) has launched a unique...

There are folks trying to figure out what happens after the election with the millions of people who have formed a grassroots digitally connected network during the campaign. As a kind of online community organizer, I figure it's worth putting this in historical context and then proposing some serious short-term...

This year, more than ever, everyone needs to vote on November fourth.

In many cases, like for college students, guidance is needed regarding where to register (home or campus?)

Also, given how busy we all are, advice regarding absentee ballots helps everyone out. (I've used one for over...

Sunlight Foundation and its director, Ellen Miller, leads the effort to find out what's the deal with the financial bailout legislation. Wired provides an update on their efforts:

When Congress rushes through important legislation such as this upcoming bill, extraneous items of questionable merit are usually thrown in during...

We're experiencing a great movement towards networked, grassroots democracy, and anything citizens can do to promote that is good for the country.

The Open Debate Coalition's principles mark a significant step forward in that direction. The Coalition asks that the videos of the presidential and vice presidential debates be...

Want to know what's in that $700 billion bailout legislation for the mortgage companies? What should be in the legislation? The folks at Sunlight have posted publicmarkup.org both the Administration's bill and one being offered by Senator Chris Dodd in a way so that you can read and comment...

MAPLight.org's newest government transparency tool shines a light on the river of money that runs through all Congressional committees. Check out this example of a consumer-centric credit card bill, H.R. 5244 - the Credit Cardholders' Bill of Rights, that, if passed, would protect consumers from arbitrary interest rate hikes and...

From the AP :

Move over, Al Gore. You may lay claim to the Internet, but John McCain helped create the BlackBerry.

At least that's the contention of a top McCain policy adviser, Douglas Holtz-Eakin. Waving his BlackBerry personal digital assistant and citing McCain's work as a senator,...

Two minor items...

Jay Rosen's much too kind to credit me with my microscopic contribution to the effort here.

An alternative metaphor to "grow a spine" is "get a pair" courtesy of Amy Poehler and Tina Fey.

There are good signs that the media is resisting bullying from the McCain/Bush/Rove axis, and we should encourage 'em. They realize that the reporting some years ago regarding WMD was, maybe, not so good, and they're starting to report on the bad guys again.

Jay Rosen of PressThink and...