Some clever people at the New York Times are playing around with a tool they call Represent. It helps New York residents figure out who represents them at the various (and many) levels of government, and match them with relevant stories from the NYT, but nothing outside, of course…).
It looks like a good use of increasingly common tools, and agree with Gilbertson at Wired, who argues here that geodata tools can help newspapers localize their content effectively online.
From a concerned citizen and media researcher perspective, they also help make visible how many of our elected officials labor in almost total darkness–countrary to all the talk of the total ‘mediatization of politics’ you may have heard of.
(thanks to Erica S for the tip)
rasmuskleisnielsen.net 