Regular readers of this blog will notice a new topic popping up over the next few weeks as I poke around to find out how mainstream, public, progressive and citizen media-makers are creating high-impact media around the bailout and related financial chaos.

Most of the categories on Build the Echo are meta-categories about media shifts. The big exception has been the election—a story that powers a lot of progressive media production and generates change in its wake. But given the historic proportions of this bailout, I imagine we’ll be seeing some unusual creativity through the end of the year as media makers and audiences struggle to understand what happened and how to deal with the aftermath.

Tracking progressive media responses will be easier thanks to the new Media Consortium newsladder on the economy. I’ve also really been enjoying (if you can call it that) the coverage by Andrew Leonard on Salon’s “How the World Works” blog.

Public media makers have really stepped up to the plate over the past few weeks—here’s a piece on how audiences are gravitating towards Marketplace for bracing and sometimes humorous economic coverage. This American Life has done a bang-up job of humanizing the crisis while still digging deep, and the related NPR blog Planet Money follows up on the coverage by NPR reporters highlighted in the two TAL shows on the tanking economy.

Over at the Center for Social Media we took a quick look early in October at citizen and open media responses to the bailout. Ballotvox also did a a rundown here. Mashable noted a trend that’s funny, disturbing or both: image compilations of desperate brokers. Social media presentation sharing site slideshare is soliciting PowerPoint-like treatments with its Credit Crisis in 30 Slides Contest–I had my doubts about this one, but actually kind of enjoyed the presentation that drew together Economist covers from the last decade to tell the story of the slide.

More to come I’m sure!

Tags: bailoutimpact