Deborah, "local politics and information" is a huge topic. What kind of information do you want to put in front of whom? Remember that more people care about political gossip than about policy!

Our mutual friend Joe Beckmann could probably tell you that, just in Somerville, you can get reporting in print and online at the Somerville Journal (http://www.townonline.com/somerville), a Community Newspaper Co. franchise, and the Somerville News (http://somervillenews.typepad.com/the_somerville_news/), an independent paper backed by local real estate interests. The Journal also gives you the Mayor’s Blog (http://blogs.townonline.com/somervilleMayor/), which Curtatone posts to about once a month. The News “blog” prints selected articles online and gives the irascible Somerville population a chance to respond. There’s a lot of name-calling and slander on the News blog, but also a fair amount of humor, some informed rumor, and a real insight into what residents with too much time on their hands think about the current administration and the long history of Somerville political corruption.

If you (or the Sunlight Foundation) are looking for issue comparisons of candidates, the Somerville and Boston newspapers do those regularly. Maybe the tack should be to encourage them to display them prominently throughout the campaigns? Or perhaps you’re more interested in organizational surveys and candidates’ response to them. It might be a public service to collect links to all of those in one place.

Community access TV is a good place for coverage of School Committees, Boards of Aldermen, City Councils, etc. I know that SCAT (www.access-scat.org) in Somerville and CCTV (www.cctvcambridge.org) in Cambridge are also bridging the gap between cable TV and webcasting.

Finally, civic engagement goes far beyond political campaigns. Again, to use a local example, you would probably learn more about what really goes on in Somerville by following the dispute between the Mystic View Task Force, the City, and various developers than by reading all the campaign coverage for the last ten years.

Hope any of this helps!

There is a vast library of local politics - Boston, Cambridge and Somerville local politics - already online, already very available, and used all the time by many different people. There are listservs on Yahoo and Gmail (particularly Yahoo with Progressive Democrats of Cambridge, of Somerville, of Boston and of Massachusetts, as well as MoveOn files for almost everywhere); as well as regular web sites ranging from the MassScorecard.org (now a little out of date) and Scorecard.org for the nation, to a fairly well done Progressive Democrats of Somerville at http://www.pdsomerville.org/. The Dean Campaign gave it momentum, accelerated by a very elaborate computerization of the Deval Patrick campaign which had everything from phone banks to press releases. Google is really all you need to begin.

Hi Deborah,

As the Natick Bulletin & TAB acclaimed youngest Natick town meeting member, I will blissfully (as in ignorantly) claim to be an expert on local politics.

First of all, New England town-meeting style local government (with selectmen (select-people?), and town administrator) is generally nonpartisan.

Second, easily getting local information simply doesn't happen. Even on topics that a town agency is actively doing outreach on, relatively civically engaged people are more likely than not to miss it until after it is too late to voice an opinion, let alone effect change. On matters that town government would rather people not know about, forget about it.

Third, there coordination is difficult even on well-publicized issues. I think many people in Natick were unpleasantly surprised by a Boston Globe West article on the money spent on a retirement investment board (when using the state pool, as most towns do, provides far higher returns at no expense to the town). However, there has been no town meeting proposal to eliminate the board that I know of.

I have a proposal to address information and coordination problems on the local level. Though I have not heard back from the Knight Foundation, PWGD and Agaric Design Collective will be working on these matters of many-to-many communication one way or another, sooner or later.