This is the season when a lot of people are taking vacation time—which naturally means coming back to hundreds (if not thousands) of waiting emails and trying to catch up on a backed up RSS feed. What amazes me is how the field of Gov 2.0 journalism is both maturing, and underdeveloped. Maturing, because we already have a few people who cover aspects of government activity in the digital landscape as their primary (or sole) beat, and underdeveloped because there are only a few people who have that beat.
When I came back from my last vacation, I limited myself to three sites to catch up on my Gov 2.0 reading, and these were they. I’d love to hear who would make your Must-Read-Three list. (Note: I’m including only Gov 2.0-specific journalists and news outlets, so sites like GovGab, Sector:Public, and Athena’s Lightning, are not included)
A few weeks ago, Alex, the Gov 2.0 correspondent for O’Reilly Radar wrote 14 columns. By the end of the week, I had not read all of them; they are not even all published on the O’Reilly properties, but instead across a few sites. Alex is obviously passionate about Gov 2.0—in this case, I mean simply the intersection of technology and government—and I’m happy that he’s is so busy; it means that those of us in the field are doing our jobs.
As a testament to how busy Alex is, he tweeted more than 1,500 times in November and wrote 40 columns. He livestreamed, video blogged, and sat down with Chris Dorobek for an interview on Fed News Radio. There are other people who write about Gov 2.0, of course, but Alex is the only person, that I can tell, who covers all aspects—local, state, and federal activities, as well as private sector engagement and developing trends.
I was quick to add Alex to my Twitter feed when he started writing for O’Reilly, and I’m always happy to see him at Gov 2.0 events. I’ll be equally as happy to sit with his competition counterpart in other MSM outlets when they materialize.
I first met Andrew Rasiej, founder of TechPresident, a couple of years ago at an unconference. His site was already impressive, and since then has become essential for people who want to understand where Open Government is and get a glimps into where it’s going. Though TechPresident tends to focus more on politics and stays mostly at the federal level, Nancy Scola writes a lot about the intersection of technology and governing—which is my main interest. As a dedicated Weekly Round-up author, I especially appreciate her “Clearing the Cache” articles, which are consistently high-value.
GovFresh (Now with FedScoop!) / Luke Fretwell
I’m a big fan of Luke Fretwell, and not just because he published my Twitter Guide on GovFresh, the site he started a year and a half ago (and thought he was shutting down only last September). Like Alan Silberman, Luke gives the West Coast perspective on Gov 2.0, and like Alex Howard, he mixes in the municipal with the federal for a wider perspective.
FedScoop is a great place for Luke to land and also a good single resource for me, as it displays feeds of other great sites: Fed News Radio (with Chris Dorobek’s INSIDER column), NextGov, and in a meta-aggregator twist, even the Huffington Post. One question for FedScoop’s founder and President, Goldy Kamali: why no feed for the Business of Government Blog?
That should be on everyone’s list!
Thank you for the mention and kind words, Gadi! You put me in great company. November was indeed a busy month.
Chris Dorobek is tireless and covers more of the federal beat than I do. His Dorobek Insider blog is an excellent resource.
Nick Judd (also at techPresident) and OhMyGov are consistently great reads and are definitely in my Gov 2.0 feeds. I dip into NextGov and Federal Computer Week as well, when they devote time to the subject. On that count, InformationWeek: Government has a special feature on open government coming soon. Something to watch and read.
While they don’t tag it explicitly as Gov 2.0 (usually because it’s not!) the Morning Tech column at Politico is must-subscribe on tech policy in DC, which does inform the conversation.
And, if you’ve missed it, the PBS News Hour has begun covering Gov 2.0 recently as well.
Agree with Alex’s addition of OhMyGov – that’s a must read for me. I’ll also add GovWin.com, a great site for keeping tabs on events, discussions, blogs and news in government, as well as helping government agencies to make business connections.
Dorobek and Howard are exceptional for consistent high-value and high-volume coverage in the Gov 2.0 and fed policy space. Amazing, really.