Information Super Highway?

This week I set out to see just how easy is is for citizens to learn about their government using the Internet.  I looked up Gov. Bev Perdue's last finance report, the number of registered voters in North Carolina and the salary of UNC-CH Professor W. Hodding Carter.


In less than an hour I was able to this information, but I was surprised that I found it by using links in newspaper articles and blog posts. I was glad to see that journalism is still very useful in providing information, even in the cyber world. But I wonder, what will happen if all newspapers start charging for online content? Will finding information online be more difficult without access to those links?

Below I have chronicled my search for each bit of information.

Bev Perdue's cash on hand
To find Gov. Bev Perdue's cash on hand, I googled "Bev Perdue finance report cash on hand."  I found several news articles, but none of them provided the exact information I needed. And those that did list numbers didn't provide links to the report, so I wasn't satisfied.

I searched the North Carolina Board of Elections Web site and was inundated with a long list of documents that I could not decipher. I opened a few of them but still didn't find the information for cash on hand.

So I went back to Google and found an article in the News & Observer that tagged Gov. Perdue.  Using that tag, I was able to pull up every blog post and article mentioning the governor. I then searched for "finance report" and found a link to Perdue's campaign finance reports for 2008.

But the link led to a report from Jan. 2009, not the most recent report. But it did lead me to the correct portion of the BOE Web site. I began sifting through the document and about five minutes later, I found a report dated Dec. 31, 2009, which listed Perdue's cash on hand as $485,124.55 for the reporting period and $374,139.74 for the election.

Registered votes in North Carolina
When searching for the number of registered voters in North Carolina, I stayed on the North Carolina Board of Elections Web site. I looked around the site, clicking on the voter information tab and using the search bar, but I was not able to find any numbers. So I went back to Google.

I searched for "number of registered voters in NC" and found a blog, TalkLeft, which listed:

• Total Voters 5,791,221
• Democrats 2,616,995
• Republicans 1,933,929 

But I realized these stats were from April, 2008 and I also didn't trust the Web site. But the site had provided a link to the report they cited.  From there I was able to find a report from Feb. 13, 2010, which listed 6,099,485 voters in the state, 2,766,056 Democrats and 1,934,188 Republicans.

Salary of Professor W. Hodding Carter
I began again with a Google search. It led me to an N&O section, about the triangle. I typed in Professor Carter's name and department but no results were found. I changed my query, but was again unsuccessful.

I went back to Google and changed my query to "NC employee salaries" and found a link to the UNC employee salary database, again via the N&O.  I searched for Carter at UNC-CH and found his salary -- $106,778.

Posted by Kelly McHugh