Aggregated Awareness

From the US news site, ProPublica, comes this report showing that 26 US States are now borrowing funds from the Federal Government in order to continue paying Unemployment Insurance to their constituency. The 26 States are doing this because their respective State level Unemployment Trusts have run out of money to pay claims, and are thus, relying on a US Federal Government handout.

The problem is that the US Federal Government is also heavily in debt with the rate of debt accumulation rising. So, one could be excused for concluding that this is clearly an unsustainable fiscal path being traveled by the governments in the US at State & Federal level.

This is an excellent example of the kind of rich-media story that the web can provide. ProPublica should be pleased with this story, for not only is the message of the story important, but the presentation of the story utilises all that the web can provide. Such as interactive, visual information presentation (ie. the coloured map of the US States providing Unemployment Trust figures & Borrowing figures as the user hovers a mouse over it); as well as providing the standard table grid which presents further data and the ability for this story to be a "living story". That is, a story that is actually a data archive, since ProPublica announces that they will be updating the data on their page weekly. So users can come back & track the state of the US State's fiscal (ill)health.

Excerpt: "...A record 20 million Americans collected unemployment benefits last year, and twenty-six states have run out of funds and been forced to borrow from the federal government, raise taxes, or cut benefits..."

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