LISNews: Librarian News

The New Media Index is a weekly report that captures the leading commentary of blogs and social media sites focused on news and compares those subjects to that of the mainstream press.

PEJ launched the New Media Index as a companion to its weekly News Coverage Index. Blogs and other new media are an important part of creating today's news information narrative and in shaping the way Americans interact with the news. The expansion of online blogs and other social media sites has allowed news-consumers and others outside the mainstream press to have more of a role in agenda setting, dissemination and interpretation. PEJ wanted to find out what subjects in the national news the online sites focus on, and how that compared with the narrative in the traditional press.

You ever want to walk through a bestselling author's office? You know, just to see what it's like?

Well, you can do that virtually with Stephen King's office. He's got a new thing on his website that allows you to take a interactive tour of his workspace. You'll want a fast computer to do this along with Flash, but it is kind of fun and interesting. You can click on items to get information about them and there's even a sort of treasure hunt involved.

Take the tour. When you get started, it will look like it's asking for a log in, but it's actually not. You can walk around without entering anything.

Further to my story about polite twittering below, here's a cool site: Tweet Congress, a grassroots effort to get members and staff of the U.S. Congress twittering.

Here's their website's banner "We the Tweeple of the United States, in order to form a more perfect government, establish communication, and promote transparency do hereby Tweet the Congress of the United States of America."

Via promotional emails from Powells.com (at least they haven't gone under yet)...

How The Dose Works--Seven days a week, the Daily Dose brings a reader's review to your Inbox — along with a chance to win free books!

Each day shortly after midnight we post the day's featured item on our web site and in our email to Daily Dose subscribers. The reader whose comments we use has until day's end (11:59 p.m. Pacific Time) to visit our special contest page and claim the prize. Each day we add $20 credit to the available total — until someone wins free books. Then the next day it all starts again.

To enter, write a short review of any item on Powells.com that you think we should tell Daily Dose subscribers about.

Click here to read the complete and official Daily Dose contest rules.