If you follow me on Twitter, you probably noticed that I spent my lunch hour at the Open Society Institute today for a talk on "The Future of News" by Paul Steiger, the longtime managing editor of the Wall Street Journal, who is the head of ProPublica, an "independent, non-profit newsroom that produces investigative journalism in the public interest." It was a mostly gloomy session, framed by the news that 11,000 professional journalists have lost their jobs in the last two years, and all the bad news currently coming out of the newspaper industry. Well, instead of beating a dead horse, here are three ideas for projects that could help sustain investigative journalism however it is practiced going forward:

I'm pleased to have played a small part in helping our friends at the Sunlight Foundation pull together this nifty piece of 3-D (Dynamic, Data-Driven) journalism on the Wall Street bailout: a Google Motion Chart built on top of data from the nonpartisan, invaluable Center for Responsive Politics that lets you see just how big the big money from FIRE (Finance, Insurance and Real Estate) has grown in the last 20 years, and who gets it. Trust me, this is cool.

Buyers of political books on Amazon are clearly divided between people who favor liberal titles vs people who favor conservative titles, with little cross-buying occurring. But a new study of consumer behavior suggests that so-called "influentials" may not matter as much as everyone thinks, and the malleability and gullibility of voters who are easily influenced by others is the more important factor.