Today’s Wall Street Journal has a story today which includes a terrific US map visually showing the density of investors who have been bilked by Bernie Madoff’s ponzi scheme.

And while that’s an awesome graphic, which tells a great story, the data table they use to list the victims leaves much to be desired. At least you can sort the data, but how about giving readers the ability to search, filter, email, print and even republish it? Something like this is what I have in mind:

What do you think? Doesn’t that blist widget make it easier to work with the data?

What’s more, the Wall Street Journal story links to the full data set. That’s really great. I love the transparency. But it’s a 162-page PDF document. That’s even harder to work with than an HTML table. How about loading up the entire data set into blist and letting people play with it to their hearts content? That’s what we did. Here’s the full blist of investors bilked by Bernard Madoff:

A blist is a web list. blist is the very best way to share your web lists with your audience. Even the savvy technologists in The Obama Administration have found it beneficial to publish data with blist. Publish your structured data online with blist.

source of graphic: court documents via Wall Street Journal