You see, rather than attempting to hide things from the public, the government at all levels (including the Obama administration) has taken the idea of transparency to an entirely new level, releasing such a flood of documentation and information all across the spectrum that nobody could possibly sort through it all. In terms of keeping the public informed, think of it as death by a thousand documents. Newspapers and cable media entities simply don’t have the staff required to dig through that much material on everything from budget numbers to job postings, purchase orders and more. But, as Bill explained, an army of bloggers (or one blogger willing to put in the hours and elbow grease) can comb through the mountains of data they release on government web sites. By putting in Freedom of Information Act requests on seemingly mundane budget subjects, bloggers can uncover even more if they have the time and gumption.
He related several stories of how smaller, state level political bloggers had found all manner of government malfeasance which was later picked up by the networks. (Occasionally even giving credit to the original finder.)
