Last week we published another exclusive report on a little-known subject that really matters - and about which Washington has been anything but aggressive. We showed how universities are earning millions of dollars quietly selling names and addresses of students and graduates to credit card companies, while allowing the companies special access to school events.

Even as students find themselves awash in debt, big and elite schools are earning royalties that multiply as students use their cards and dig themselves in deeper. The substance of these deals between colleges and banks had been secret. For all the celebrated changes in last year's credit card "reform" legislation, Washington didn't touch these so-called "affinity" agreements.

People sure noticed. Our site and others were flooded with over 2000 comments, tips, and potential citizen journalists eager to seek out evidence of similar deals at schools we have yet to examine. Our story found its way onto the pages of the (San Francisco) Chronicle, the Houston Chronicle, the Connecticut Post, the Seattle Post Intelligencer, and the Albany Times Union - as well as the Hearst and New York Times newswires. US News, Mother Jones, MSNBC, Investigative Reporters and Editors and the Chronicle of Higher Education referred to our story, as did bloggers and partisans of many stripes.

Impact? We've already had some of that. Even before we published, three universities amended their agreements with credit card companies after being contacted by our reporters. As our readers (including college students themselves) ask colleges for their affinity contracts, the trend could continue.

This type of work is vital now that so few news organizations or watchdogs are serving as true overseers and guardians of the public interest. Many reporters these days often aren't even in the right place. This was made very clear by the American Journalism Review, which documented the decline in substantive, D.C.-oriented reporting over the decade.

That's why we're here - to help fill the hole left the the wake of painful cutbacks in recent years.

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