National Geographic, long lauded for its excellent mapping, is equally masterful at infographics. Here’s a chart that imparts most of what you need to know about the health care debate.  A lead-in description is here, but hardly necessary. I believe the graph puts our forthcoming, um, historic health care reform in perspective. Looks like we’ve got a long, long way to go. [via Kottke]

News out the other day is that WhiteHouse.gov is now running under the Drupal framework.  Here’s Tim O’Reilly’s evaluation of the significance.  As noted, it’s a benchmark moment for Drupal, and for all open source content systems and software.  There are still folks out there who would suggest that ‘free’ CMS solutions such as WordPress, Drupal and Joomla are beneath the effort and investment required for ‘enterprise-level’ content. Well, you can’t really get more enterprise than the executive arm of the United States of America. So there’s that.

[via Romenesko] Jack Shafer of Slate cuts up the idea of government stepping in to assist the struggling newspaper industry. A House hearing was held later last week – lightly attended by committee members – with the chairman involved emphatically denying any kind of “bailout,” but more obviously leaning forward on the idea of allowing newspapers to enter into non-profit status. Shafer believes in no part of it, and relays how it might influence balances that are quite fluid:

Propping up troubled papers has a cost. It weakens the enterprises that are rising from below to compete with them to deliver advertising and, yes, deliver news. I can think of no better way to hinder the rise of such Web sensations as Politico and Talking Points Memo than rewriting the rules to benefit newspapers.

I’ll admit to being intrigued by the non-profit angle for media, but Shafer’s skepticism is well taken.

There are plenty of places and segments where the absence of a daily or weekly newspaper would be a serious blow to an informed public, as no other entity is waiting to instantly fill the void. But allowing newspapers to remove themselves from the tax rolls, then presumably persisting with business as usual, hardly seems to answer to the public’s best interest.

The best bet for consumers involves new, nimble organizations, for profit or not, emerging to provide information and context.