Yesterday America ventured out in what election-activist say was “the most heavily watched election in history,” with volunteer lawyer battalions and an arsenal of media contacts, corruption databases and documentation systems at the ready.

As voter watchdog groups stood guard, the Sunlight Foundation and its contributors determined exactly how Congress members dipped into their war chests. If nothing else, this was the most open source election in our nation’s history.

Sunlight, a funder of NewAssignment, and its citizen researchers are looking into how Congressional candidates pay their spouses directly or indirectly using campaign money. As Jay Rosen stated, “the practice is not illegal”—but it is “questionable.” Since Jay’s post the Sunlight Foundation has picked up even more momentum—with mentions in the San Francisco Chronicle and Austin American-Statesman.

As of two days ago, all Congress members had been investigated and Sunlight’s Bill Allison was about to start combing through the “raw results”—which asserted that 19 spouses were paid a total of $636,876 since January 1, 2005.

The distributed research model at the core of Sunlight’s Congressional Family Business Project may offer some insight into how open source journalism research can and should be structured. One key, which I think Craig Silverman will appreciate, is verification. The other — context. Sunlight’s data raises important questions about our Congressmen. Now we must look behind those numbers to give them meaning.

I spoke to my friend Ryan Hagen, who recently founded the online election magazine Primarily, about the Family Business Project – he is a fan of the idea but warned that “data alone is not knowledge.” The project is an “incredible innovation” but “demands an equally innovative process to complement it.” Ryan even had a few ideas for how Sunlight might improve its process:

One next step Sunlight could take is by crowdsourcing a project to contact the representatives in question, asking them to explain themselves. Another step would be to contact ethicists, political scientists and other experts to get a handle on why this practice isn’t illegal, and whether or not it should be.

In the open journalism universe, verification and context are the difference between open source journalism and straight-up open news. And there is enormous value in both.

Analyzing and verifying news is part of the definition of “journalism.” At this end of the open journalism spectrum we see the efforts of and the goals of NewAssignment.Net. At the open news end of the spectrum, the focus is more on helping to collect and present citizen news, without the editors. Sites like Newsvine and my own upcoming GroundReport fit into this category.

The public has a host of tools at its disposal, and it’s ready to use them. The challenge now is to make sure the tools we create are effective and deserve to be wielded by masses on the march for democracy.