Docs in the news -- and in Newsweek

From the blogosphere, come these two noteworthy items on government documents:

1. The New York Times apparently has a server dedicated to the reports, studies and documents (government produced and otherwise) its articles cite. Presumably because most readers would click into the documents from the article referencing them, there doesn't seem to be a direct and public link to the "Documents" page (though it sports a root directory of http://documents.nytimes.com). Type in that address, however, and you'll be redirected to an RSS feed to which you can subscribe.

Among some of the information posted here:

• the DOD review of the Ft. Hood Shootings
• the (as yet unpublished) first installment of the Army's history of the war in Afghanistan
  
• records the ACLU and NYT obtained on deaths of immigrants in detention (with annotations from editors)
  
• government reports on pathogens in ground beef (and the industry's ammonia treatment of meat)
• a first look at the Harvard Business Review's redesign
  

2. The January 18, 2010 Newsweek features an article on StatAb -- called, Suicide, Sex, and SUVs. Nice to see this resource being "mainstreamed."

Future News?

I came across an announcement today for a project out of Google Labs, called Living Stories. It'a an "experiment" between Google, the NYT and the Washington Post to re-present news content for a 21st century audience and in a 21st century medium.

The FAQs (also linked from the bottom of the screen) offer interesting additional information. Clicking on a link from the Living Stories page, though, reveals where the product is going in terms of personalization and other features. Very cool.

And in certain ways, we're back to the future. Google has incorporated into real-time reporting some of the features that Facts.com already offers for historical news (i.e., Recently Deceased or No-Longer-Living Stories).

New York Times (Proquest Historical Newspapers)

Here's a tricky problem Steve solved. The NYT won't allow you to alter their pdfs. Even if you burn the file to a CD, the image is locked. So you can't make an enlarged copy or cut and paste pieces of articles. So Steve saved the pdf as a jpeg. The jpeg file could be edited.