I noticed with amusement recently that some colleagues who are out on the presidential campaign trail are voicing a complaint that echoed some of my own sentiments when I was on a similar assignment: They are hardly getting any opportunity to ask the candidates questions, let alone spend any quality time with them.

If anything, the reporters are saying, campaign organizations have become more controlling than ever. This complaint is especially true for the front-running candidates such as Sen. Hillary Clinton and former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani. Reporters are lucky to get a press conference once a week, some said.

From a candidate’s point of view, this is how it should be. To the politicians, there is paid media – their television and radio commercials – and free media, the coverage they get from journalists. Paid media, they can totally control. Free media, they do their very best to manipulate. And limiting access to a candidate is part of that effort. This is especially true of the traveling press, as opposed to the local press, at least in part because those who are regularly following a candidate are quicker to see contradictions or changes in position and tend to be more critical.

But there is a new – changing is a more accurate word – element to political coverage these days that offers voters, and reporters, more and maybe better ways to find out who these people who want to run our country are and what they have done in the past. And it might mean that traveling with the candidate is not necessarily the best or only way to cover a campaign.

I’m talking about the explosion of Internet sites that are looking at every aspect of the campaign and the candidates.

At the most basic level, you can watch a debate or interview you missed by going online to a site such as YouTube or a television network’s site. You can also visit a candidate’s Web site and review his or her position papers or, of course, contribute your dollars to the campaign.

But what has really caught my interest this campaign cycle are the nonpartisan journalism sites that are quickly and thoroughly evaluating what the candidates say compared to what the facts or the historical record really are.

For instance, there is a site called PolitiFact.com, sponsored by the St. Petersburg Times and Congressional Quarterly, that runs a “Truth-O-Meter” that evaluates what candidates say on a true, mostly true, half true, barely true or false scale.

When Sen. Barack Obama says, “I do provide universal health care,” the meter says barely true, and you can click on to a spot that explains the difference between his health care plan and Clinton’s in some detail. Or when Sen. John McCain says that Giuliani never took part in the Iraq Study Group and was either fired or asked to leave, the meter says “True” and goes on to explain that the mayor missed the group’s first two meetings and never participated in its work.

At FactCheck.org, there’s a multimedia piece on “how to spot political ads powered only by hot air.” The story contains one commercial from Republican Mitt Romney and one from Democrat John Edwards and explains how each uses positive words and images that are largely devoid of substance. “Voters should beware,” it says.

There are many other sites illuminating the campaign in different ways, including Politico.com, RealClearPolitics.com and mainstream media Web sites such as those of Newsday, the New York Times or the Washington Post.

My point isn’t that it is not important for reporters to be following a campaign on a regular basis. Of course, it is. They have to keep pressing for more access to candidates. But 20 years ago, we were limited to what we knew about candidates by our local newspaper or the television networks.

The Internet represents a revolution in communications, for better or worse. For the news consumer, with a little bit of effort, it is definitely better.