The team behind Wikileaks -- a global hub of online knowledge that, while shrouded in a bit of mystery, has published and protected game-changing documents from inside governments, corporations, religious groups, and more -- has a new secret to share: what they do isn't free. Wikileaks.org has ceased operations until January 11th in a bid to direct focused attention onto their fundraising ask. The group, which by popular legend grew out of Chinese dissidents resistance against Beijing's censorship, is looking to raise about $200,000 per year to cover the costs of its infrastructure and legal fees. A journalism student named Stefan Mey has a lengthy interview with Wikileaks spokesperson Julian Assange, an Australian who participated in our recent PdF Europe conference in Barcelona, about why Wikileaks has borrowed a page from union movements all over the world and gone on "strike":

They remind people that their labour has value by withdrawing supply entirely. We give free and important information to the world every day. But when the supply is infinite in the sense that everyone is able to download what we publish, the perceived value starts to reduce down to zero. So by withdrawing supply and making our supply to zero, people start to once again perceive the value of what we are doing.

Many of us have heralded Wikileaks as part of the next generation of journalism, but it's clear that they're having trouble getting their basic needs met. The journalistic "old guard," such as the Associated Press and the LA Times, reports Assange lends support in the form of legal advisors, but with the group turning down cash donations from governments and corporations, the need for a new funding model has become obvious. Wikileaks has evolved, and quickly, to be a core part of the journalistic universe, as we saw in the recent case where they helped the Guardian paper in the UK make an end run around an injunction against publishing materials having to do with the Trafigura dumping case in Côte d'Ivoire. But like many in online journalism, innovations in publishing haven't yet been matched by innovations in how you pay for it. Their pitch now: "We protect the world—but will you protect us?" (Photo credit: Esther Dyson)

The word came via email on Monday that Danny Glover, a veteran editor with National Journal and other publications, had taken over the editor's role at Capitol Hill Tweet Watch Report. The Tweet Watch Report was itself launched by techPres contributor David All's David All Group early last month, a daily email tracking what members of Congress, members of the press, and other relevant people are saying and doing on Twitter.

Glover's new gig is an interesting little mix of the state of modern journalism, new media, and old school politics, and so I asked him to walk me through his vision for the product. With the caveat that he's only been on the job three days now, Glover says he sees Capitol Hill Tweet Watch Report as having a two-pronged goal. The first is providing those people working in and around Congress with an easy way to get a sense of what's going down on Twitter, much in the way that The Hotline's Blogometer tracks what's being said on blogs. "I look at it as a news barometer of what people on Capitol Hill care about, what they're watching, what they think is important," he says. "Members of Congress and their staff need to be informed, at a minimum. Even if they don't use Twitter themselves, they need to be aware of what people are saying." The second, though, is to increase the pool of those on the Hill using Twitter by encouraging non-adopter members and staffers to model their tweeting colleagues...

More than a million people live in Rio de Janeiro's favelas, those makeshift towns that ring Brazil's second largest city, where faveladors make up a full one-sixth of the population. You might have seen an inside look into Cidade de Deus, one of Rio's favelas, in the popular 2002 film "City of God." And that's probably the only peek into favela life you'll have ever seen, because the Brazilian press routinely ignores the existence of their many countrymen and countrywomen who live within the favelas' boundaries, other than to report on the violence that springs up there.

And so, some enterprising Brazilian reporters, most of whom are faveladors themselves, are making use of some of the simplest technologies we know -- palm-sized video cameras, laptops, and 100% open-source software in their computer labs -- to profile life in the favelas, and in that way make the case that residents have a role to play in Brazil's politics as their country rushes to embrace a role on the world stage. Viva Favela, highlighted at the recent State Department-affiliated Alliance of Youth Movements in Mexico City, is a web-based project that gathers together such multimedia reporting. One particular neat project: a Google Map that pinpoints each of Rio favelas on the geography of the city, tied to community-reported audio, video, and text on that particularly place. An upcoming Community Communication School is geared towards teaching even more favela residents how to use the web and other technologies to make their once invisible lives more difficult for the Brazilian establishment to ignore.

All of which means that the international press, in Rio for the 2016 Olympics, will have much less of an excuse for overlooking such a sizable chunk of the city's population.

Don't miss Clay Shirky and Steven Johnson's latest ruminations on the future of journalism and the fate of newspapers; they will clear your head (if it isn't already) about how technology is driving change in this vital arena.

I've been multitasking this morning, catching up on email and glancing at Twitter, and three times I've noticed the power of the live, interactive web as a new factor in my life.

Just a note to alert you to the fact that Tom Friedman has expanded his repertoire of political reporting techniques to include using Google's suggested searches to divine the focus of modern America's collective angst and inquisition. (Well, the world's, really, I think -- though Friedman doesn't say it). Type "Ba" into your Google search box. Topping the suggested list isn't, as you might think, the leader of the free world. Nope, writes Friedman. "The first thing that comes up is not Barack Obama. It's 'Bank of America.' Barack Obama is third." (My first thought was, you silly, silly man. That's Google's customized results for you, and your financial-columnist search history. But no, he seems to be right even when you turn off custom search.) Friedman takes this to mean Obama's first term will be "eaten by Citigroup, A.I.G., Bank of America, Merrill Lynch, and the whole housing/subprime credit bubble we inflated these past 20 years." Sure, you're no Tom Friedman, but I invite you to draw your own conclusions.

Take a gander at what might grandly be called some synergy between open-minded government and forward-thinking journalism. The New York Times' Hannah Fairfield and Graham Roberts have put together an interactive graphic powered by Bureau of Labor Statistics and Census Department data, mapping the disparity of what American men and women are paid for the same jobs. Jobs above the bold black line pay women better. Those jobs below put more cash in men's pockets. (The Times is careful to note that discrimination isn't the only possible cause for the wage gap.) Clicking on a job category isolates those jobs, and clicking on a job digs deeper into the data. Fairfield and Roberts also annotate the chart at various points to draw journalistic conclusions from the detailed data BLS and Census make available.

Well, who was the big loser in the Iowa caucuses? It wasn't Mitt Romney or Hillary Clinton, and it certainly wasn't Ron Paul. The big loser was political punditry.

Beating up on Times political reporter Adam Nagourney is a hobby gleefully enjoyed in many corners of the Interweb, but now that he's ventured onto OUR turf, it's time for a quick barrage of jabs, hooks and vicious undercuts, e.politics-style. Why? Writing Wednesday about Joe Trippi and the John Edwards web team, Nagourney shows exactly how well he can channel a campaign's spin uncritically and without context.

Now, Joe Trippi is a damn smart guy and the Edwards folks may well be using the 'net in interesting ways, but the only way you'd know it from THIS article is because they tell us they are, not because Nagourney shows any actual evidence. This key paragraph lets us know what we're in for: