Neiman Journalism Lab has a great post this a.m. in reaction to a new Google Lab release: a Google News timeline view,:

which gives users the ability to see and scroll through headlines, photos and news excerpts by day/week/month/year. The sources of this data can also be customized to include not just traditional news sources but also Wikipedia, sports scores, blogs, etc. It’s a fascinating way of interpreting the news — not something that is likely going to replace a regular old Google News headline view, but an additional way of looking at things.

One question kept nagging at me as I was looking at this latest Google effort at delivering the news, and that was: Why couldn’t a news organization have done this? (I’m not the only one to wonder this). Why not a newspaper, or even a collective like Associated Press (which seems to prefer threats to creativity)? Isn’t delivering the news in creative and interesting ways that appeal to readers what we are supposed to be doing?”

I had the EXACT SAME REACTION when I saw the Google Timeline yesterday. Progressive media peeps–it’s time to put the creativity hat on. So I have a proposal, something I’ve been thinking about for a while.

I think we should do a multimedia timeline of our collective economic coverage over the past 8 years–maybe focused on a single issue or two (i.e. predatory lending, Wall Street regulation) and input coverage from video, text, audio, blogs, reports, etc. from key progressive media sources. I think this effort could do a couple things:
a) Everyone keeps asking where the financial press was during this economic crisis. Well, the progressive media has been reporting furiously on the economic meltdown for years. Let’s show it. Let’s prove that what the “lefty” press was reporting and predicting came true.
b) We’re wondering how to tell this very complex and sprawling story to our audiences in a way that makes sense of the past and sets the stage for future reporting. A visual, searchable component that connects the reporting together into a larger narrative and makes it comprehensive for our audiences is a critical informative tool.
c) The opportunity factors: There’s an opportunity to start playing/integrating new storytelling and journalism formats. (We need to start figuring it out soon). This is an opportunity to leverage and utilize individual content into a collective, larger story and the opportunity to reach a potentially larger audience. And this could be an opportunity to have our audience be part of the creative process. Can our audience crowdsource to research, identify the reporting to go in the timeline?

What do you think of this idea? What would you add or argue with?