Sunlight is Accepting Applications for Blogger Mini-GrantsThe Sunlight Foundation/Network is offering grants of $1,000 to $5,000 for local bloggers that dedicate some of their blogging time to covering their member of Congress. The focus should be on shedding more light on what Congress does and how to improve communication between citizens and Congress. As a rule we do not award money for salaries but do for technology upgrades. Apply for a mini-grant at http://www.sunlightfoundation.com/grants .
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Help Spread the Truth About the Candidates for Congress
This spring, citizen journalists blew Big Media out of the water with their coverage of the Democratic superdelegates on Congresspedia - who was endorsing whom, how the voters in their district voted, whether they got campaign contributions from Clinton or Obama and anything else.
Now we're trying to do the same thing for the candidates for Congress - incumbents and challengers - and the presidency. There are already profiles for every candidate from Arizona at the state portal ( http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Arizona ). They turn up high in Google searches and tens of thousands of people per week are already reading them. Do you or your readers know something worth publicizing?
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New Tools for Tracking Congress: Capitol Words, Fortune 535 and OpenCongress
Bush. Energy. Oil. Caribbean? These were the most frequently uttered words in Congress last week, brought to you by Sunlight's new site, Capitol Words ( http://capitolwords.org ). It displays the most frequently used word in the Congressional Record for every day that Congress is in session back through 2000. There's even an RSS feed and an API if you want to include it on your site.
Sunlight's new Fortune 535 site ( http://fortune535.sunlightprojects.org/ ) lets you track how much, or how little, lawmakers' wealth has grown since 1995. Visualizations help you see how your elected representatives compare to you.
OpenCongress has a new set of features that make it easy to find information about any bill, vote, issue, or Member of Congress. See details at http://www.opencongress.org/articles/view/531 or just jump in at OpenCongress.org.
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Come Meet the Sunlight and Congresspedia Folks at Netroots Nation
If you're coming we'd love to meet you! Sunlight staffers are holding an "Insanely Useful Tools You Can Use to Keep Track of Congress and State Lawmakers" workshop on Saturday, July 19th 3:00 PM-4:15 p.m. in room 18C. We've got tons of tips and tools to investigate and report on lobbying influence, campaign contributions, legislative data, government documents and how all these points of interest intersect. ( http://www.netrootsnation.org/node/828 )
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If you have any question or comments about any of our projects, we'd love to hear from you. Just hit us back at this email address.
Best,Conor and AvelinoCongresspedia.org and the Sunlight Foundation-- Avelino Maestas Assistant Managing Editor, Congresspedia.org The Sunlight Foundation amaestas@sunlightfoundation.com
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