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We are living in a dangerous time, caught between what we’ve never done especially well and what’s now increasingly difficult to do.

While scrutiny of our governments was supposed to become easier in the online information age, governments — especially local municipal governments — may be getting away with less transparency.

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Part of the problem is shrinking newsrooms, which has meant fewer professionals independently monitoring the comings and goings at all levels of government. The online social media revolution that promised an army of “citizen journalists” freeing us from supposed media bias neglected to account for the reality that the job of of monitoring government is tedious and hard, requiring something more relentless than the easily distracted online world can provide.

But lest anyone assume this is about journalists’ self-pity, let us acknowledge that journalistic scrutiny of government — especially local, municipal government where there’s never been glory in sitting through the tedium of a six-hour local council meeting — has always needed to be better. And with even less people now willing or able to scrutinize local government, we need tools at our disposal to provide that scrutiny, and for local governments to accept that transparency is of foremost importance.