







Photo Credit: Denver Post

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Exactly how do you swallow your news these days?

Do you still prefer the morning newspaper print edition; or do you prefer to just reach for the remote and flip on CNN for finding out what’s going on in the world?

Or are you like a growing population of adults, who like to receive their news in real-time on their mobile devices, while making a mad dash to work, waiting in a ridiculous long line at the supermarket, or while munching on a sandwich?

According to the Pew Research Center , “more than eight-in-ten U.S. adults now get news on a mobile device (85 percent), compared with 72 percent just a year ago and slightly more than half in 2013 (54 percent).”

Pew additionally reports that in 2016 , just two-in-ten U.S. adults regularly get news from print newspapers, a steep plunge from 27 percent in 2013.

Despite the seismic shift to mobile devices for obtaining news, television, by far, remains the most popular medium. As many as 57 percent of U.S. adults are regularly exposed to TV-based news, either from local TV (46 percent), cable (31 percent), network (30 percent) or some combination of the three.

Since the migration to mobile devices for consuming news is growing more robust by the day, I thought it would be fun to check in with some leading and popular gatekeepers (who better?) to share what apps or online sites they are most fascinated with.

So, what follows are some responses that flew back to my inbox after I emailed a number of prominent journalists to ask if they would consider sharing their favorite apps, cool tools, or websites.

George Stephanopoulos, co-anchor of Good Morning America, and the host of ABC's Sunday morning This Week, replied that he gravitates toward Vox, TalkingPointsMemo and the National Review .

Dean Baquet, executive editor of The New York Times said that in addition to his own paper's app and the Washington Post's app , he's a big admirer of the Quartz app, a website owned by Atlantic Media Co., which is comprised of former reporters from Bloomberg, The Wall Street Journal, The Economist, and The New York Times.

Norman Ornstein, a political scientist and resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), a Washington D.C. conservative think tank, is a huge fan of the Washington Post blog, The Plum Line (administered by Greg Sargent), The Daily 202 (or Power Post) also from the Washington Post, along with Jonathan Bernstein's sharp analysis at Bloomberg.

Tom Meagher, deputy managing editor at The Marshall Project , a nonprofit, nonpartisan online journalism organization focusing on issues related to criminal justice in the United States, replied that he's become a big fan of the podcast "Bombshell" from "War on the Rocks." "It's more analytical than straight reporting," Meagher informed me, "and it's focused primarily on foreign policy, national security and diplomacy."

Michael Shear, New York Times White House correspondent said his favorite is an election map by Zentropy Software.

According to Shear, “In election years I use it all the time to keep track of electoral votes and to play with various scenarios."

Sheila Krumholz, Executive Director at Center for Responsive Politics , informed me that Ballot Ready is a new award-winning site that she's become familiar with. Ballot Ready is an online voter guide to local elections.

Jonathan Karl, Chief White House Correspondent for ABC News in Washington, D.C., highlighted NPR One, among others, as one of his all-time favorites for keeping informed. NPR One is an audio app, which provides stories and podcasts from NPR, your local public radio station, along with other outlets.

Kimberley Strassel, Potomac Watch columnist for Wall Street Journal Editorial Page, regularly visits RealClearPolitics , a Chicago-based political news and polling data aggregator formed in 2000 by former options trader John McIntyre and former advertising agency account executive Tom Bevan.

Jack Shafer, POLITICO's senior media writer finds TweetDeck to be enormously useful. TweetDeck is a social media dashboard application for management of Twitter accounts in which users can monitor and tweet from multiple accounts simultaneously.

Shafer also appreciates the utility of Microsoft’s OneNote , a computer program for gathering users' notes (handwritten or typed), drawings, screen clippings and audio commentaries.

Shafer says he's been able to store clips of his at OneNote, going back to 2008.

Jennifer Manning, Congressional Librarian at the Congressional Research Service (CRS) in Washington D.C., says that in addition to the Biographical Dictionary of the U.S. Congress , she has heaps of praise for LegiStorm , home of congressional press releases, tweets, the most up-to-date and accurate staff contact information, and oodles of other important legislative issues.

The Reference Office at the U.S. Senate Library in Washington D.C., were kind enough to offer some of their favorites for finding the most up-to-date legislative information, including the Congressional Record , Congress In Your Pocket , TrackBill , CQ Roll Call , The Hill , and Politico .

For those hard-core news junkies, policy wonks, and number crunchers, who like to get into the weeds when untangling news, Edwin Bender, Executive Director of Follow the Money and his staff, recommended some truly groundbreaking sites for presenting news in the digital age.

For starters, Bender is a big promoter of Digital Democracy who he feels are on the cutting edge of 21st Century transparency; though they are just in in their “start-up” mode with only two states.

"Because California has no record of committee hearings", Bender explained, "DD is videoing all, transcribing testimony, indexing content by subject, speakers, etc., and making it all available via its site. It’s also developing an “alignment index” that shows when legislation correlates with the interests of outsiders."

DD streams Follow the Money's data to its site to inform its users with the hope that Power Mapping tools will ultimately become available to the public. "CalMatters and the Texas Tribune are likely collaborators," Bender added.

Pete Quest, from Follow the Money, recommends the Center for Public Integrity's new search tool for tracing "Dark Money," to discover the money nonprofits are giving each other.

Quest is also a fan of Good Jobs First ,which provides a nifty online tool to track corporate tax breaks or other corporate economic incentives states provide.

Yet another online tool shared by Quest is the Campaign Finance Institute's interactive tool for examining how different campaign finance policies might affect small donor participation. And at the bottom of page 2 of CFI's study of Party Contribution Limits and Polarization users will be able to examine the causes of legislative polarization.

Calder Burgam, Researcher and Outreach Specialist at National Institute on Money in State Politics plugged a couple of news sites which used the Institute's data in a remarkably innovative way.

At WRAL.COM for example, whenever they publish an article that includes a state legislator, readers can hover over the legislator’s name to see a list of their top contributors. Such as this example .

Burgam also enjoys the Legislative Navigator created by the Atlanta Journal Constitution, which compiles the latest information on bills being considered, along with important contribution data. Here's an example of AJC's Bill Page. And by clicking on a legislator, you're taken to a Profile Page , which includes district information, voting record, and campaign contributions.

According to Burgam, "these examples represent ways traditional news organizations can adapt and provide easy to access and valuable context for their readers. And the great thing is, any organization with access to a computer programmer can implement tools like this."

Finally, Denise Roth Barber, Managing Director at the National Institute on Money In State Politics, recommends LittleSis , a free database noting the connections between powerful people and organizations.

--Bill Lucey

WPLucey@gmail.com

July 13, 2017