Blomquist presented his early findings at the Pew Center's Annapolis workshop. The "Campaign Central" pages didn't cut through the noise of the negative campaign ads, he reported. But a clear "winner," he said, was a Voters Guide published the weekend before the election that distilled the newspaper's issues stories into issues grids for each candidate.

"This is what (readers) wanted in election coverage. Concise, side by side comparisons of issues in bullet form," he said. And the focus groups indicated that information presented in grids had more credibility than narrative stories.

"So far (our research) is suggesting that the public's disconnection from politics is more than just changing the framework from vox politics to vox populi... Much of the challenge for journalists is: Can we do this without becoming McPaper and McNews?"

The research will be published in early spring.

Early results are signaling some measurable impact. "We have failed to prove that citizen-based journalism has no effect," Meyer quipped at last month's Annapolis workshop. "There is a tantalizing hint that it does have some effect."