NewsDiffs.org is an online resource for tracking changes made to online news articles, detailing the words and passages that have been struck or added since an article's original publication.
Read MoreState by State Guide to Personal Financial Disclosures
VR Research has prepared a 50 state guide for how to search and download Personal Financial Disclosures for state legislators and other statewide elected officials. These records are an essential resource when conducting research on public officials, to understand their business dealings, financial backgrounds and potential conflicts of interest.
Read MoreFOIA Turns 50 and FOIA Improvement Act of 2016 Signed Into Law
July 4th marked the 50th anniversary of the Freedom of Information Act, which has just been newly amended to improve public record access and modernize the law.
Read MoreState by State Guide to Lobbying Data
Lobbying data is an essential resource when researching influence over elected officials. Lobbyist registrations and expenditures have become readily accessible to search and download, but access to this data varies widely by state. To make this easier to navigate, VR Research has prepared this 50 state guide for how to access, search and download lobbying data.
Read MorePoliticians' Deleted Tweets Now Archived and Searchable Again
Politwoops, an archive of tweets that politicians have deleted from Twitter after posting, is once again active and searchable. The website allows for searching of an individual politician's deleted tweets, filtering by state, political party or political office, and keyword searching.
Read MoreState by State Guide to Campaign Finance Data
VR Research has prepared a state-by-state guide to researching campaign contributions and expenditures, providing information about and links to campaign finance data in all 50 states. As more states have moved to requiring electronic filing of campaign finance reports, data has become much easier to search, has been indexed to allow many different cuts at the data and is downloadable in several formats. However, the approaches to presenting, indexing and providing access to this data vary widely by state.
Read MoreInternet Archive's Wayback Machine Gets Funding for Major Enhancements
The Internet Archive's Wayback Machine, a massive archive of 19 years of captured websites, has received funding for a next-generation overhaul which will add some search capabilities and enhance how it captures webpages and displays media-rich content.
Read MorePower Search for California Campaign Contributions
The California Secretary of State in coordination with non-profit MapLight has unveiled a new Power Search tool for accessing California campaign contributions. Power Search allows users to more readily review candidate and committee contributions and provides an easy interface for looking up individual contributors.
Read MoreNew SEC Rule will Require Public Companies Disclose Difference Between CEO and Employee Salaries
Today the Securities and Exchange Commission voted to adopt a final rule requiring that public companies disclose the "pay ratio" measuring the difference between the compensation for their CEOs and their average rank-and-file employees--providing newly public insight into how much companies pay their workforce.
Read MoreNext Librarian of Congress Could Revolutionize Online Collections
With the retirement of longtime Librarian of Congress James Billington, the next Librarian has big decisions to make that could revolutionize the world's largest library by bringing more of its collections to the Internet. The Atlantic has written a great article on the possibilities that await, and could potentially transform the Library of Congress into a true national library.
Read MoreSearching Political TV Commercials
Political TV ads from current and past campaigns can be a valuable resource when researching a candidate or campaign. While YouTube provides a helpful starting point for finding political ads of interest, several advanced search tools are available to find how much candidates spent to buy ad time, as well as archives to find older TV ads not otherwise found online.
Read MoreCongressional Mileage Scandal (1840s Edition)
While Rep. Aaron Schock was making headlines last week, resigning Congress amid reports he had overcharged taxpayers for more in mileage reimbursements than his vehicle had on the odometer, ProPublica published a fascinating article about how government records were used to uncover another congressional mileage reimbursement scandal more than 166 years ago.
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