Strengthen Droves of Citizen Journalists

Just as superior audio and video equipment combined with platforms like YouTube, have made it possible for millions of average people to produce and distribute professional-grade multimedia art at an unprecedented scale, so did blogging platforms allow the same people to gain influence in the great debates that shape our cities, states, and nation, and world. These bloggers do not have the budgets to travel to courthouses and pull paper records.

Let us help them spend their time more productively: thinking, synthesizing, and writing new ideas. The infrastructure carrying our democracy’s data — including that of our court systems — must be improved to keep pace with the explosive gains in online publishing technology. Let’s empower millions of the next generation to research and analyze the records of justice. Let’s allow millions more lights to shine on our democracy than was never before possible. We will progress with a more diverse palette of policy and procedural insight, at a faster pace than ever before.