“Blowback! That’s what you’re in for when a great American newspaper runs a Sunday opinion piece as irretrievably lame as “Blogs: All the noise that fits” by Michael Skube (Aug. 19).”

So starts Jay Rosen’s crowdsourced response to Skube’s blast at bloggers earlier this week. Titled “The journalism that bloggers actually do,” Rosen’s response doesn’t just get to the heart of the controversy and misguided claims of Skube, he proves it wrong by organizing a quick example of networked reporting on the Web.

Much like our coverage of CNN’s YouTube debates, this was a “fly by the seat of our pants” investigation. Lesson learned: it is possible to organize swift reporting online.

Jay had written an initial response that ended up on the front page of the Daily Kos gaining plenty of eyes and comments.

Well, if the eyes are there, why not use the brains that are connected to them? That is, assuming bloggers know how to use their brains (Skube supporters respond).

Turns out, they do. Rosen asked the commentors to leave examples of bloggers who have done real investigations, citing the date, offering a link and a one sentence description.

Not only does the list stand in the face of Skube’s remarks against blogging as a medium for journalism, the manner in which the list was culled was an act of collective reporting organized through a blog.

I call that a “double booya.”

I helped a bit sifting through the initial list, which was then fed back to the Dialy Kos community one more time for refining. Meanwhile, Jay went to his community at Pressthink and his social network on Facebook for even more suggestions.

Lesson Learned: Our readers know more than we do (other than Skube, most of us have learned this lesson already). It’s possible that Jay and I could have come up with a similar list on our own. It would have taken much longer and in truth, it would have lacked many of the insights that came from the community. An individual can only remember so many investigations and we tend to fall back on a few key examples that are important or relevant to our lives.

But if you open the question up to hundreds or thousands of readers — then you have the collective memory of entire communities.

Lesson Learned: collective memories are out there, all they need is a community organizer to give them a platform so they can contribute it in a meaningful way.

And the list speaks for itself. If you doubt that blogging can result in journalism - have fun clicking the links below (note: for a bigger list check out the first round)

August, 2004. Chris Allbritton goes to Najaf.
Reporting for his reader-supported blog Back-to-Iraq.com during the major fighting around the Imam Ali Shrine, Allbritton manages to get inside to interview members of the Mahdi army and report what’s happening. He’s then arrested by the Najaf police under live fire but lives to write about it.

June, 2007. Pet-food scandal ignites blogosphere. Pet owners frustrated with the limitations of the news media self-organize into a national network of sites and share news about tainted foods that may have killed thousands of pets across the country.

March, 2007. Firedoglake at the Libby Trial. Popular lefty political blog provides the only blow-by-blow coverage of the trial by splitting the work among six contributors who bring big knowledge to bear for a committed-to-the-case readership. Reporters come to rely on the blog for its updates and its accuracy in live-blogging and analysis.

2003 to present. Groklaw becomes the go-to source for coverage of SCO vs. IBM. Law blog — one obsessive blogger, plus readers — takes on saturation coverage of key lawsuit involving open-source software, becomes an authoritative source of knowledge for the case’s participants, who have never seen anything like it.

September 2004. Joseph Newcomer provides comprehensive examination of disputed Killian memos in CBS report. A computer typesetting expert, he uses his knowledge to cast serious doubt on the authenticity of documents "60 Minutes" relied on in its story on President Bush’s Air National Guard service.

February, 2006. NASA political appointee resigns. Graduate student and science blogger Nick Anthis finds out that 24-year-old George Deutsch, a political appointee accused of trying to silence NASA climate scientists, lied on his resume about having a college degree. Deutsch resigns.

2007 to present. Blogger Michael Yon reports from Iraq. Supported primarily by donations from readers, independent journalist Michael Yon
— a former Green Beret — is spending 2007 embedded with soldiers whose courage and sacrifice he admires, and whose stories he tells, mostly recently from Anbar province.

December 2006-April 2007. Talking Points Memo drives the U.S. Attorneys firings into the national spotlight. Mixing old-fashioned legwork with perseverance and lots of help from readers over several months, Josh Marshall and his TPM Media empire accumulate evidence "from around the country on who the axed prosecutors were, and why politics might be behind the firings."

December 2006. DallasFood.org investigates Noka Chocolate. Gourmet food blog provides the only in-depth investigation into "world’s most expensive" chocolatier’s deceptive marketing practices.

August, 2005. Unbossed.com does a series on toll roads as a business with a track record. Among the findings: "Local governments in Colorado have agreed to deliberately impede traffic on existing highways near a toll road in order to protect the toll roads’ investors."

June, 2007. EdCone.com scoops News & Record on its own layoffs.
As the paper clams up, its staffers, ex-staffers and readers use blog comments and e-mail to create the only detailed public account of layoffs at the daily newspaper in Skube’s backyard.

February 2006. EPluribusMedia investigates the politics of Post-Traumatic Stress Syndrome. In a three-part series pulling together a lot of scattered information,
the citizen journalism site details the impact of politics on the funding, diagnosis and treatment of Iraq war veterans suffering from PTSD.

2005 to present. Citizens construct Katrina timeline. Members of the ePluribus Media community create a detailed timeline of
key events before, during and after the Aug. 29, 2005, hurricane made landfall at New Orleans, with over 500 events, fact-checked and sourced. It continues to be updated as the story stretches onward.

August, 2006. Porkbusters, the Sunlight Foundation and TPM Muckraker expose congressional earmarks and the senator who placed a secret hold on a bill to put information about federal fund recipients online.