Distributed Blogging

Some interesting ideas were stirred up at a Bogging Journalism & Credibility Conference. Over on PressThink, Jay Rosen has an interesting round up of attendee's thoughts

What caught my eye was Robert Cox's notion of 'distributed blogging'. As he describes it:

bringing together, say 1,000 bloggers - trained and organized - to analyze a complex government document like the Federal Budget and produce a detailed analysis of the report within a matter of hours and then disseminate that information to tens of millions via a network of blogs. If you think CBS News did not like the treatment they got by bloggers, imagine how Congress will feel when they realize every bit of pork they to slip into the federal budget is going to be broadcast worldwide by an army of bloggers. Now multiply that for state and local budgets, government departments and so on.

The internet is a powerful tool for collecting and searching distributed knowledge and we've only skimmed the surface of its capabilities. One thing's for sure: the times, they are a changing.