The St. Petersberg Times and Congressional Quarterly just launched PolitiFact, and it covers politics in a way that no other format can.

It’s really a good example of online journalism because it does something that you can’t do well in other formats. Merely taking concepts you have learned from print or broadcast journalism and sticking them on the Web is hardly “new media.” It’s just repurposing content.

But PolitiFact isn’t that. It’s a database-driven site, built from the ground up, to cover politics in a new way. Instead of the pundits and talking heads, who clearly root for their home teams, this site attempts to cover politics objectively.

How is that possible? Its goal is to ascertain the truthfulness of claims made by presidential hopefuls. We are bombarded with countless ads, e-mails and people telling us what a politician has or hasn’t done. Often they are factually incorrect.

With PolitiFact you can go figure out how honest politicians or claims about them are.

This is from the about section of the site:

In the months ahead, the news staffs of both organizations will examine major claims by presidential candidates and rule on their veracity. Our Truth-O-Meter will help voters sort fact from fiction in the campaign. This is a working database and over time it will grow more valuable.

Because the site is database-driven, it is really easy to find information. If you only care about attacks on Hillary Clinton you can go to her page and see what people have said about her. Conversely, if you only care about the attacks she makes, you can find that information too.

The site has just launched, so it’s hard to say how good it will become. The concept is great and the execution has been good too. The site could use more content, but that should come in time (you can view all the content on the site in 15-30 mins).

Politifact should serve as notice to newspapers that they need to figure out better ways to cover stories. Just writing stories about the truthfulness or lack thereof of politicians isn’t good enough. We all know newspapers only cover some of those stories, and they are never grouped together.

Without grouping stories together, it’s hard to put them into context. That’s the ultimate power of this site, because it allows you to view claims about all the presidential politicians at once. Also, while most of the content is written, Politifact hasn’t taken to writing long-winded stories about everything. It has short, concise written pieces that have summaries at the top.

Summaries and not flowery ledes? How dare they! Those written sections are combined with graphical elements to display its content.

It just works. Hopefully, other newspapers are taking notice.

I was just visiting Cleveland.com to check out some information about the Browns, and my blood pressure has just risen.

The site, as always, asked for my information — location, age and sex. I’ve typed it in countless times over the past 10 years or whatever. Every time I login on a new computer or empty my cache and cookies on my current one, I have to type it in again.

This has been going on for years. Clearly, their data is skewed heavily by the fact that people like me enter the same exact data. That’s not exactly a great way to gather information.

It’s one thing to ask people to do this once when they sign up for an account, but it’s another thing to tie it into a cookie. So, as you can guess, I’ve been placing fake information in for the past year or two because I am so fed up with it. It really aggravates me.

I’m sure The Plain Dealer and Cleveland.com really enjoy all the erroneous information they are giving advertisers. Here is a simple solution: get rid of that stupid information request!

It’s so annoying that I often click out of the site before viewing a story. I’m not alone either. And other sites need to stop making people register so they can  view basic content like stories.

Are you really gaining valuable information from these processes? Of course not. Plenty of people type in erroneous information and it sends others away because it is an unnecessary step.

If you want accurate information find a more scientifically proven method to gather data for advertisers. But don’t annoy your users just so they can view your content. Plenty of sites do not do this, and users are more than willing to go to their sites to view content instead.

Are you listening New York Times? CNN doesn’t make me register, which is probably why I go to their site more often. It’s just more user friendly.

We just want to view the content. Nothing more.

If I register for a site, it better be for a good reason. If sites have social networking or customization features, it makes sense to offer registration? But requiring registration to read a story?

Get real.