Back in the day (and I mean waaaay back, in the late 1700s actually), this Irish guy named Edmund Burke said something profound:

The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.

A little later, a Scottish guy named Thomas Carlyle said something equally profound:

Burke said there were Three Estates in Parliament; but, in the Reporters’ Gallery yonder, there sat a Fourth Estate more important far than they all.

In much of the developed world, we have enjoyed a few hundred years of more-or-less functioning democracy.  Things worked because reporters witnessed and publicized our politicians’ actions.  Burke called this the fourth estate.  What he really meant was newspapers.  Yup, good ol’ fashioned words printed on dead trees sold by impoverished children yelling “Extra! Extra! Read all about it!”  That’s what kept our politicians honest.

Reporters everywhere endured sittings of legislatures and mind-numbingly boring city council, school board, and water department meetings.  Politicians couldn’t advance corrupt agendas for fear that reporters (assuming they weren’t asleep) would tell all in the paper the next day.  For the most part, though, nothing newsworthy happened and the newspapers just published throw-away summaries on page C52 above the ‘help wanted’ ads.

Honestly, I can’t figure out why newspapers ever reported on these boring, thankless, mostly readerless stories.  Newspapers make most of their money from advertising.  They can sell more ads for more money if more people read their pages.  Surely minutes of February’s Sturgeon County School Board meeting do not drive readership.  So why did newspapers spend so much of their ad dollars filling “Reporters’ Galleries yonder”?  I don’t know, and it doesn’t matter now that the days of newspapers are numbered.

That journalism is changing is clear.  What role this changed journalism will play is not.  Clay Shirky likens the change to the year 1500 just after the printing press was invented:

So who covers all that news if some significant fraction of the currently employed newspaper people lose their jobs?

I don’t know. Nobody knows. We’re collectively living through 1500, when it’s easier to see what’s broken than what will replace it. The internet turns 40 this fall. Access by the general public is less than half that age. Web use, as a normal part of life for a majority of the developed world, is less than half that age. We just got here. Even the revolutionaries can’t predict what will happen.

So the internet broke democracy and nobody knows how to fix it.  At least not yet.

I’m optimistic.  The same internet that broke democracy (boo internet!) also makes it easy for any citizen to monitor and publicize the creation of any legislation (yay internet!).  The question is whether citizens will do that now that newspapers don’t.  I think we should.  After all, “the only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”

This is not just baseless handwaving.  It’s actually pretty easy to do your part: Pick a topic of public interest that you’re passionate about.  If you’re having a hard time picking one, just go through your Facebook feed and find the bandwagon you’re most likely to jump on with fervor.  Maybe it’s the environment or animal rights.  For others it might be health care or something related to their profession like, say, meat packing or electrical contracting.  It doesn’t matter what, just pick a topic.  Then, find the web sites where changes to your city’s bylaws, your provincial or state legislation, and your federal government’s legislation are published.  Search around in there.  Bookmark them.  Come back again later.  Get familiar with the structure of the documents you find there.  Skim them for anything related to the topic you picked.  When you find something that looks surprising, research it and figure out exactly what it means and which politicians are responsible for it.  Get help from people smarter than you to understand what you’re reading.  Write up your findings in a nice blog post and Facebook/Twitter/whatever the shit out of it.  If this happens enough, politicians will notice that voters are paying attention and behave themselves again. If people care about your post, it will spread and you will have influenced the guilty politician’s next election!  Three cheers for democracy! Hip, hip…you get the picture.

Don’t get discouraged if you don’t do as good a job as a newspaper reporter.  Frankly they didn’t really understand what they were reporting anyway.  Nor were they passionate.  The important thing they were doing was showing up.  Showing up is all it takes to keep politicians honest.  Newspapers aren’t showing up anymore.  You can.  You don’t even need to leave the comfort of your home.  You’re the fourth estate now.  Congratulations!