Nonprofit and small for-profit public service oriented media organizations (Independent Media) are, after a delayed response, quickly developing Web 2.0 or “social web” tools.

After sticking to the old Web 1.0 practice of simply using the Web as a basic publishing platform, small media enterprises are now jumping head first into the Web 2.0 game, adapting new media tools like Digg.com and invoking the ethos of communities like YouTube and MySpace.

The Quick Rundown

Buzz Flash, TreeHugger, and Huffington Post have all launched Digg.com type
portals where citizens can submit and vote on current news headlines. BuzzFlash has BuzzFlash BUZZ, TreeHugger has Hugg, and Huffinton Post has HuffIt.

Not all is well in Digg-town this morning. Yesterday a bug gave one smart Digger the ability to peer into the system and extrapolate the inner workings of the community. Namely, David LeMieux found a way to highlight what users were burying and why.

In about two hours LeMieux got the data on 1,708 buries, fueling growing concern about the benefit of the bury tool in the first place. The “Bury Brigade,” where anonymous groups of users bury Digg stories they find ideologically unappealing, has become common nomenclature.

With all the secrecy around buries, LeMieux’s hacking could provide insight on what is happening inside the community. But it seems even discussions about the bury effect have been closed off.

One user, Supernova17, was even banned from Digg for submitting the highly controversial link as a dupe (he has since been re-instated).

More interesting than the drama of a large social network trying to come to grips with itself, however, is the workings of networked citizen journalism effort that has sprung up in immediate reaction.