Distributed research. Political bloggers interested in the Armstrong Williams case are trying out what one calls

...a "distributed research" project -- where a number of people collaborate to try to find [the truth about this case] by getting the documents and analyzing them. (Kos)

In other words, the case appears to be far too complex for one or two researchers to handle, and the post's author, GregP, goes on to sketch where the information may be acquired and suggest breaking down the tasks and assigning them. No matter where this particular case goes, it's a good model for web communities.

We see that the tools make a difference, too:

I've set up a Yahoo Group, "No Pundit Left Behind" to serve as a forum for coordinating this effort. If you're interested, please join the group.

And there comes a time in the process where someone needs to generate a summary of what is known so far, as in this post from SusanG:

Plame Leaked by Fake News Source? Overview: Part IV
by SusanG
Sun Jan 30th, 2005 at 06:41:05 PST

White House-credentialed fake news reporter "Jeff Gannon" from fake news agency "Talon News" was cited by the Washington Post as having the only access to an internal CIA memo that named Joseph Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, as a covert CIA agent. Gannon, in a question posed to Wilson in an October 2003 interview, referred to the memo (to which no other news outlet had access, according to the Post)...

So there is a project, an organizer, appropriate software tools for sharing information, a division of labor, occasional digests of the data, and dissemination. Along the way you also see guides created by others involved in similar projects -- tools that need not be reinvented, such as this one:

Society of Professional Journalists site on using the Freedom of Information Act.

Not the same as the "distributed blogging events" practiced frequently (1 2 3) by the food bloggers, distributed research deserves to join the catalog of worthy blog genres. [0 & P]