Okay, here's my list of ideas, posted in a not entirely random order. Some of these have been experimented with before, but could be improved or expanded. Others would need manpower to obtain the information necessary, as it may not all be immediately available online, but is in the public record.
- Mapping your news - news/wiki site with traditional and Google Maps based interface.
- Follow The Money 1 - A tool to cross reference government contracts based on political contributions and the resumes of government office holders.
- Hyperlocal wiki - A wiki/news site focused on a small area run by a news organization with both user and professional content.
- Lifestyles of the Rich and Elected - Tracking how elected officials and top policy makers live. Pictures of houses, clubs they belong to, boats, resumes, etc. Compare education and income to the average of their electorate based on census figures.
- Who owns your town? - Using Google Maps, track ownership (and change over time) based on public records. Can also incorporate lawsuits, ratings of property owners, etc.
- Primary Source - This is more of a philosophical decision rather than technical implementation, but I think it's something more organizations ought to do: post all primary source material along with stories: transcripts, recordings, unedited videos, etc. There would likely be some instances where this isn't possible, but it would put more information in people's hands.
- Follow The Money 2 - Tool to locate who holds government contracts and what services they provide through Google Maps so you can tell locally who makes money from the government.
- Public news tip - Users can post news tips publicly onto a Google map run by an organization. This is really just an extrapolation of the standard news tip feature, but make it public with timestamps and able to be viewed by location.
- Bring the war home - One of the problems in understanding war and violence in other countries is that Americans often don’t know the terrain or locations. To give people an idea of what the violence is like, map the violence over a locale they know well. In our geographic area, overlay Baghdad on top of the greater Kansas City area. Visitors to the site could see what the death and destruction would look like mapped out in their own backyard. Idea could be extrapolated to almost any major conflict or disaster.
- NewsFutures - This one is kind of a gimmick, but could be fun to play with: Forecasting tomorrow’s news based on today. Analyze tags and keywords associated with stories on a news website to forecast what likely stories will appear tomorrow.