I just checked by the way: I had 6 XHTML validation errors, all of which are now fixed. I'm valid!

It is indeed a step forward, and I'd like to see it go a few steps further.

As far as the shortcut to the blog mentioned above, that's great if people know about it. It's a redirect, which means it gets replaced by the longer URL as soon as it gets entered.

But if I may rectify a few points you made: at no point did the Gazette claim this was a "breakthrough" or a "revolution" in participatory journalism as you ascribed. The exact words we used, I believe, were "exercise" and "our shot at." We don't pretend to rival devoted projects to outsourced reporting like NewAssingment.net, because we simply don't have the time, staff or resources to oversee something so demanding.

Rather, this was a new way of conducting an investigation, by publishing every bit of research on a blog and letting readers and other interesting parties participate in it.

As much as members of the "new media" love taking potshots at the cluelessness of traditional media, there is just as strong a lack of understanding on the other side. "Hey, those newspaper people aren't doing exactly what we're doing! They're so silly!"

Web people know what good web work is. Of course they'll be critical of us. But understand that our print readers aren't (for the most part) bloggers, nor do they spend their days reading them. That is why, my dear curmudgeon, we have received several congratulatory emails for this series from our readers.

Readers usually write in when they're mad at us. I think that says something.