Jeff Gannon and Talon News, the Downing Street Memo, and fake TANG documents are just the tip o' the berg. Each day the lords of Blogdom offer insights on stories and factual tidbits that would otherwise be dismissed, overlooked, ignored, downplayed, or outrightly covered up. We should all be very thankful for this new medium - one that seeks to fill the canyonic gaps created by mainstream news outlets.

As this investigative vigor grows within the blogosphere, so too does the thirst for usable tools that ease the process of investigative journalism.

In response to that, Political Cortex has created an extensive resource page targeted toward helping investigative online journalists do what they do best - dig out the truth.

Today, we are happy to add a powerful new tool - one that assists in the process of requesting documents via the Freedom of Information Act.

FOIArequest.org is a project of the People for the American Way and offers this introduction on their website:

Want to see three minutes of bad voice acting and hear the worst Dick Cheney imitation on record? Want to see the balding Veep chase down three men dressed in chicken suits as he tries to make sure that the only leaks coming from his White House are the leaks that he created? Then witness the glory that is Cortex Film's Duck! Cheney
 

 
I think it's fair to say that game reviews are a very rare feature at Political Cortex. But then, it's a very rare game that can be used as a tool for everything from expressing dissent up to making campaign commercials.

The title of Mica Sifry's article on AlterNet is The Best $24.95 MoveOn Ever Spent.  What they got for their money:

. . . if by some chance you stumble onto one Flickr member's home page, you'll discover a very odd-seeming list of tags in its cloud, led by antiroverally, approved, candlelight, cindysheehan, faceamerica, great, memberadded, mothers, photopetition, and vigil.

Welcome to the public Flickr account of MoveOn.org. With little notice, the giant liberal advocacy group has dipped its toes into the social networking slipstream, and so far it's quite enthralled with the experiment.

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The larger lesson for other organizations is this: As social networking sites like Flickr, del.icio.us (also just bought by Yahoo!), and MySpace attract millions of users, it may make sense to go where the people already are and start playing with the same tools, not only because those tools may offer all kinds of benefits to the organization, but also to see what unexpected benefits may engage people. What MoveOn is doing with Flickr is just a beginning.

We don't need no stinking media giants.