The Bright Side of Chicago's Cold, Wintery Corrupted Season: Technology Paving the Way to Transparency

Blagica Bottigliero, NBC5 Street Team (Video)

As of this writing, it’s about 11 degrees in Chicago. The cold of the winter season is complementing the brisk shakedown that Governor Blagojevich is experiencing. It’s one big wintery mess. Unlike most people in the state of Illinois, I’m not worried – and you shouldn’t be either.

Ok, ok, Chicago has the old sticking point of being Capone’s town, the land of the ‘machine’ and the legacy of a crazy riot in ’68.Fine. What city doesn’t have it dramas? After all, I hail from Motown where the ex-Mayor was jailed.

The bright side of our mess is that things ARE changing. Attorney Generals, reporters and citizen champions are diving deep into phone records, old court cases and maximizing the legal processes to clean things up.  John Kass has slowly become the new Mike Royko in my mind and his column is a must-read for me these days. Aside from the traditional media outlets like the Chicago Tribune, Chicago Sun-Times and our news stations, take a gander at these local resources for first hand news:

• Gapers Block
• Windy Citizen
• Chitown Daily News
• Beachwood Reporter
• Chicago Tonight (the Friday week round-up is one of my favorites)

The corruption that plagued our city for years is coming to light because of the technologies available to us. It’s not just wire taps. It’s blogs, pictures taken with phones and posted to Twitter, Facebook or Flickr. It’s up to each of us to do what we can to keep things on the up and up.

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