There are some exciting new experiments being launched to improve the quality of journalism, and not a moment too soon. As many others have noted, the economics of the traditional news businesses aren't especially good. Producing high quality enterprise and investigative journalism--real, in-depth, original reporting--is a fairly labor intensive undertaking, and that in many ways isn't financially rewarding: If I spend two years unearthing something and publish it, the news itself can be picked up by the Associated Press and other wire services, published in other newspapers, broadcast on television and radio, and linked by and excerpted onto multiple blogs. If the Philadelphia Inquirer (where I once worked) devotes countless man hours, salary and expenses to breaking a story, readers don't have to buy that paper (let alone subscribe to it) to get the news -- the economic awards, such as they are, are as often as not realized elsewhere. It's a great system for the public, but the for-profit media companies that pay the salaries of reporters, editors and photographers who do the grunt work digging out the story have shown themselves to be less and less willing to foot the bill.

Jeff Jarvis had an interesting post the other day in which he grappled for an appropriate term for what he alternately calls citizen journalism, citizen media, networked journalism, and distributed journalism (me, I like citizen muckraking and distributed reporting, but what do I know?). Jarvis writes,

In networked journalism, the public can get involved in a story before it is reported, contributing facts, questions, and suggestions. The journalists can rely on the public to help report the story; we’ll see more and more of that, I trust. The journalists can and should link to other work on the same story, to source material, and perhaps blog posts from the sources (see: Mark Cuban). After the story is published — online, in print, wherever — the public can continue to contribute corrections, questions, facts, and perspective … not to mention promotion via links. I hope this becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy as journalists realize that they are less the manufacturers of news than the moderators of conversations that get to the news.

The thoughtful, enthusiastic responses to our request for citizens to investigate members of Congress by reading their personal financial disclosures have been coming in fast (and thanks to all who linked to the original post). I'm about to head out the door (literally) for a week out of the office, but before I do I wanted to thank everyone who's written me, and if I haven't written you back yet, I will next week when I return. In the meantime, though, you might want to read the rest of this post for advice on how to get started, what to look for, and what to do.