Kevin: " Last week saw a wave of developments in the opening of government data, coinciding with the Personal Democracy Forum in New York. The new CIO of the country, Vivek Kundra, announced a site called the IT Dashboard that shows government spending on IT contracts for many federal agencies, and includes detail on the progress and performance of those contracts, as described here. This follows the launch of data.gov in May, the first step in a new direction for federal government transparency."

Kevin: "BUT Politico also realized it couldn't be a Web-only outfit. Two things make Politico what it is, thanks to "old line" media. The continued investment of the Allbritton Family, which owns several TV stations and is struggling with debt like McClatchy, Gannett, etc. And the print version of Politico has allowed the organization "to thrive and more than double the company’s revenues," writes Wolff. He attributes the success of the print tab to the Web site. Maybe so. But print is paying the bills. And there's nothing new in that."

Kevin: Martin Langeveld writes: "A from-scratch news organization today would, of course, be an online-first enterprise. That doesn’t rule out print as a niche byproduct, but print would not be among the 'initial efforts.'"