Field Notes Inside an Integrated Communications Agency

The beginning of this new decade is also ushering in the end of an era in the N.C. Senate. With the recent resignations of Senators Tony Rand and David Weinstein to take new positions, the announced intentions of Senators David Hoyle and R.C. Soles not to run for re-election and the 2009 death of Senator Vernon Malone, the face of the Senate is changing. Collectively, these five members have served in the Senate for nearly 100 years. They have influenced thousands of pieces of legislation and have demonstrated strong leadership over key committees. Although there may be differences of opinion on some of the positions they have taken or causes they have championed, in my own experience I have always found them to be hardworking, thoughtful and fair. They have added key insights to difficult decisions, leadership when it counted and humor at times when it has been greatly needed.  

With these departures from the Senate, not only is the state losing a wealth of experience, it is also losing a long history and deep understanding of the legislative process. And as the state continues to face many challenges, history matters. When those involved remember why a law was originally enacted or changed, why certain reductions or expansions were made to the state budget or why particular changes to the tax code were approved, it adds insight and understanding to the public policy decisions being made. The collective memories and wisdom of these five senators will be missed.

Filing to run for legislative seats begins on February 8 and ends on February 26. Prior to that time, there may be others who decide not to seek re-election. And with the possibility of hotly contested races in the May primaries and the November general election, there could be other changes that affect the make-up of the Senate leadership as well. And although change can be good, changes on the horizon for the N.C. Senate will have an impact on decisions that affect all North Carolinians.

Stay tuned. There is no doubt more to come.

I'm not a journalist by any means. I'm more of a technologist. So, I'm struck at a new marriage that seems so obvious that I'm surprised I'm hearing about it now.

The Gray Lady now has a developer API. That's right: NY Times is offering tools to developers that allow them to access information programmatically. And I'm not talking about getting RSS feeds of stories or anything that mundane. That's table stakes. NYTimes is building out the hooks for developer-journalists to access data that is otherwise difficult to obtain easily. Right now they have:

• Campaign Finance API : Presidential campaign contribution and expenditure data based on United States Federal Election Commission filings.
• Congress API: U.S. Congressional vote data, including information about specific House and Senate members.

That the Times has a developer network seems strange at first glance. They're a news source and not Yahoo!, right? But this is a natural extension of their reporting. Providing information in an unbiased fashion so that people can weigh the evidence and draw their own conclusions is part of their soul.

Some folks might argue that this isn't journalism. I wholeheartedly disagree. For me, exposing these RESTful APIs reflects a dedication to providing citizens access to content that they couldn't get otherwise. It reflects a different type of analysis, certainly, but it is motivated by the same objectives that fuel traditional journalism.

The Congress API, by the way, scrapes thomas.loc.gov, house.gov and senate.gov and makes the data accessible to anyone who wants to roll an app that can consume them.  All the dirty work of data collection and integration is abstracted from the programmer-journalist, leaving them with a well-reasoned, deliberate information source.

Oh yeah, this also is in addition to the excellent work they have done by partnering with IBM's ManyEyes visualization technology. Go to the Visualization lab and pretend you're Edward Tufte for a day.

I can't wait to see what happens with this.