When I think of print journalism, I think of journalists working the phones and going to press conferences to gather news. However, that is not the only way to do it. Indeed, the famed journalist I.F. Stone had a different yet very successful way of working. His “journalistic work drew heavily on obscure documents from the public domain; some of his best scoops were discovered by peering through the voluminous official records generated by the government”. It looks like the Guardian is supporting something along similar lines as it launches a search engine for government data. As the article in the link states:
The UK Guardian, ostensibly a newspaper but a major proponent for opening data held by governments to use by outside software developers, has launched some software of its own: a search engine that unearths datasets and pathways to data sets provided by governments around the world. World Government Data Search is now live.
In effect, The Guardian is enabling the new generations of I.F. Stones to muckrake and report on what is happening in the government. We are going back to the future.
Smart People I Know 