Devoted to publishing, publishers and to those who craft the written word

Citizen journalism took a gigantic step forward earlier this month. It's one thing to talk about the ways web readers and writers can revolutionize news writing, but it's another thing altogether to develop a practical tool that actually meets that goal.

Over at the web journalism blog, PressThink, Jay Rosen is reporting on a new application developed by the Sunlight Foundation.They released a web application that allowed a web community to perform an act of community journalism, sifting through the finance records of 435 legislators in a few days.

It's a great project, generating some cool data about how online communities work. Check it out:

"Micah Sifrey, a consultant to Sunlight, told me that two hours after the tool launched, 77 members had been checked out. As I write this (Saturday morning) the project page shows that it’s up to 265 members of the 435. (Update: the work finished on Sunday. See “After Matter” below.) ...

"It appears from Bill Allison’s progress report that a few dedicated volunteers have done way more than their share. That fits what we know from other online projects. (See the one percent rule.)"