Still, millions of elections records go unscrutinized every year. All these campaign filings are available to the public, and they should be publicly monitored and debated like baseball statistics.
We've wasted years debating a stupid issue: "Will bloggers replace journalists?" Of course they won't! But these regular people can do valuable work alongside journalists--and the stupid debate is keeping us from doing better work.
Here are some examples...
Wired did another massive research project this year. They spent six months checking 120 million MySpace users against public sex offender registries. They found 700 matches in the long, innovative detective job.
Thing is, crime bloggers like Steve Huff have been doing this kind of independent research for years.
What if they hooked up with a few national crime reporters, sharing information and crediting each other instead of arguing, "Will crime bloggers replace crime journalists?"
Over at the Sunlight Foundation, they are experimenting with new ways for citizen journalists to help sift through awe-inspiring piles of information. Jay Rosen has written a great essay about this project.
They are creating a place where citizen journalists and journalists can work together to uncover needles in haystacks. Let's think about it. I've thought of two more haystacks: sex offender registries and campaign finance records.
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