There’s a new organization dedicated to "open government", or Freedom of Information if you like.  The two major newspapers here in the NC Piedmont Triad are participating in the movement (The Greensboro News & Record, The Winston-Salem Journal), as I’m sure are most of the major newspapers in the U.S.

But while the newspapers bring much needed exposure and "oomph" for the effort, they are not the main benefactors or the primary impetus for the movement.

As one editorialist pointed out most people don’t understand that public information is open to them.  Rather, they abdicated the role of government overseer to the journalists, the "Fourth Estate."

That is changing.  The creation of the world’s cheapest printing press (the Web) a little over ten years ago initiated an era when average people began to see themselves as grass roots media.  And when blogs (websites for dummies) hit the online mainstream we had a cadre of Benjamin Franklins born overnight.

Now, with RSS, our cadre of Franklins has grown to a small army of Pulitzers (Hearsts?), and they will be the true benefactors and impetus of the open government movement.  And if I was anyone of influence or power they would scare the bejesus out of me.