Jay Rosen: “The Era of Networked Journalism Begins”:

Today marks a key moment in the evolution of the Web as a reporting medium. The first left-right-center coalition of bloggers, activists, non-profits, citizens and journalists to investigate a story of national import: Congressional earmarks and those who sponsor and benefit from them.

This is networked jounalism (“professionals and amateurs working together to get the real story”) beginning to come of age, and it’s very much in the spirit in my initiative NewAssignment.Net.

The partners in the Exposing Earmarks Project are the Sunlight Foundation, Citizens Against Government Waste, Porkbusters, and the Examiner Newspapers, along with Club for Growth, Human Events Online, The Heritage Foundation, Tapscott’s Copy Desk— and you, should you choose to be involved.

I’m really excited to see this get launched, so in comments I replied:

Wow this sounds like a great effort. It’s a shame it can’t help but be looked at as political, but to me, what’s important here, is the methodology, the technology, and the participatory nature of it.

Let me say it again – Wow.

Jay, while your title is great, I would argue the era of Networked Journalism began a long long time ago – with the launch of AltaVista perhaps. When tools emerged that those interested could pull from multiple resources of information on the web and the barriers to sharing that information fell down to consisting only of time and knowledge. I tend to see all of this as an evolution of the foundations of the web itself, as a collaboration tool.

This is simply a terrific effort and one that will stand up as an example as what is possible.

I also wanted to highlight a previous effort that that is very, very notable notable, an early mashup that seems forgotten about:

I’d like to remind folks of another interesting effort here – GovTrack.

GovTrack is a mashup that pulls together data from various sources to provide views of information about bills, representatives, and conversations taking place about them them.

The interface is a bit complicated. Maybe that’s why it hasn’t earned the attention it deserves. But it is a powerful tool to look into what those who represent us are doing in Washington.

The service won Technorati’s Developer Contest back in 2005.