American Public Media’s Budget Hero game

The Center for Innovation in Journalism at American Public Media has launched a great new game, Budget Hero, which lets people decide how taxpayer dollars should be spent and focuses on the major issues in the 2008 election – like the war in Iraq, the Bush tax cuts, expanding health care, and stimulating the economy.

ProPublica building strong staff

ProPublica, a non-profit newsroom producing journalism in the public interest, has been hiring up top journalists from around the country.

User-generated magazines

Everywhere and JPG magazines are two relatively new magazines produced by just 19 staffers — and thousands of users. A new model for magazines?

WSJ: washingtonpost.com’s ‘Hyperlocal Flop’

The Wall Street Journal looks at why washingtonpost.com’s hyperlocal experiment led by Rob Curley, LoudonExtra.com, hasn’t attracted the audience that was hoped.

Rating business sections of top newspaper sites

Douglas A. McIntyre of 24/7 Wall St. has rated the financial sections of the top 25 online newspaper sites. The commentary on what the individual sites do well is worth reading. The top site, he says, is nytimes.com.

The first EveryBlock ‘special report’

Adrian Holovaty has released the first Everyblock.com special report, an analysis of Chicago addresses mentioned in the recent federal investigation “Operation Crooked Code.” He explains the project here.

2008 APME Journalism Excellence Awards deadline

June 9 is the deadline for submitting for the  APME Innovator of the Year award competition and the Online Convergence award.

World Editors Forum live coverage

Follow coverage of the World Editors Forum in Sweden this week via blog here or via twitter here.