We’re delighted to be noticed by some of the folks on the cutting edge of online citizen journalism and old fashioned investigative muckraking. As we were getting our act together we followed, in particular, the development of Josh Marshall’s TPM Muckraker site. In fact one our initial "projects" – which has become our daily feature "In Broad Daylight" – was actually hatched before the Daily Muck. But he got out the door faster than we did!  We don’t mind the competition and I doubt he does either. Others, like David Sirota, have a similar feature, and we all have a slightly different take on the news we glean.   

And we’re intrigued by groups like Muckraked! that turn up some really good stuff.  I mentioned this morning to our staff that I’d like to develop a list of investigative bloggers and organizations (like Center for Public Integrity and the Center for Investigative Reporting) that do this kind of shoe-leather reporting. When we have it, we’ll be glad to share it. In the meantime, check out Bill Allison’s blog roll for the places he checks into every day.

We’re also hearing from people doing lots of interesting work, for example, the folks over at E Pluribus Media and GovTrack.us and ThisWeekInCongress.com. There are a lot of bloggers and organizations out there who, like us, are concerned about the lack of transparency of government.  That’s very good news.