For many, there is only one story today – the inauguration of Barack Obama as POTUS #44, which gives newspapers a chance to flex their mashup muscles and demonstrate just how ‘new’ news is done. From the Wall Street Journal’s Inauguration Day special, which features a map-based guide to the inaugural event, to the New York Times’ coverage, which, er… features a map-based guide to the inaugural event, the really interesting thing will be to watch broadcasters like CNN try to stay ahead of the tweeting and live-blogging with their coverage integrated into Facebook. Citizen journalism leader Now Public carries a guide to the best ways to watch the inauguration online, and of course has its own special section dedicated to the day.

Elsewhere on the web:

Nick Booth, social media specialist with a particular interest in active citizenship, points to Big City Plan Talk, an example of: “self organising, social media savvy citizens voluntarily support[ing] a government consultation process.”

Marshall Kirkpatrick at ReadWriteWeb continues the blog’s fascination with the semantic web with recommendations for semantic web experts to follow on Twitter. Useful for anyone interested in the goal of meaningful search, rather than the keyword-based search that is currently de rigueur.

David Pogue’s NYT piece on Twitter for beginners should come in handy to anyone trying to build a business case for incorporating micro-blogging into a communications strategy.