NowPublic is one of the fastest growing participatory news networks in the world. Time Magazine voted it last year one of the top 50 websites and The Guardian UK declared it's one of the top 5 most resourceful news sites in the world.

They have come up with a way to measure "news influence" on the web. They insinuated that traffic to one's site and/or blog is not one of the lead indicators, but how the people listed are connected to others (especially other influencers) through social media like YouTube, Flickr, Twitter, Facebook and others.

I honestly don't know what to makeof this list. I am at the same time amused and disturbed.

For one, Arianna Huffington comes in at #2 but I thought she lived in California, not New York City. Then there's the grand daddy of the New York blogeratti, Nick Denton, coming in at #34. Yet the most disturbing data point of this list is that I come in at #9.

Yup.

I am, as per NowPublic, one of the "top ten" news influencers in the New York new media market.

more like a shot of chocolate Ex-Lax.

Oh grock ...  how I hate that site!

There is nothing appealing about it.

• It has a harsh monochromatic palette.
• It's too much a link and B2B directory
• It really doesn't tell me anything about New York state on that front page.

I have been thinking long and hard about Eliot Spitzer's battle cries of reform for Albany. I take it to heart that he means serious business. The problem is, there is no visible measure of how this change is happening.

Spitzer and Bloomberg are kind of cut from the same political rug when it comes to how they are not implementing technology as an agent of practical government change. Because, honestly, we should not ask what is government. and why it is not working. We need to ask who is government and why aren't they effective.