I have often wondered what the impact would be of assigning some journalism students along with a mentor to cover the politics of a small town in gratuitous detail. Scrutinize every action of the city council. Cull through the police reports. Examine who wins and who loses when zoning policies are changed (one of the main bastions of wealth transfer via politics, IMHO). Would citizens care enough to read about this stuff? Would politicians become more accountable?

This seems like it would be a cheap (< $500K) experiment to conduct in a few towns. Perhaps some foundation interested in government transparency could fund it. However, I don't see how it would scale out without a revenue model behind it.