Nearly a century ago Ida Tarbell published The History of the Standard Oil Company. It was investigating journalism at its finest and managed to force the breakup of the Standard Oil Company and indirectly increased the wealth of the Rockefeller family by more than a factor of three.
In the late sixties this was required reading in many American history classes. Considering the existence of Microsoft, perhaps it should be required reading today.
One can now find it on the web
http://www.history.rochester.edu/fuels/tarbell/MAIN.HTM
If you haven't studied it, you should as this is one of the fundamental pieces of journalism. I re-read it recently and, once you adapt to the style, it is unusual in that it praises Rockefeller for bringing order to the oil business as well as assails him for what can only be called the creation of the quintessential monopoly.
The process of democracy a hundred years back must have seemed remarkable to those living in the period. Upton Sinclair published The Jungle a few years later and the labor movement came into its own suggesting that a government isn't owned by corporations.
So the interesting question is what will happen now in our own time. It seems to me that participatory democracy has become rather weak, but that is clearly a subject for debate.
5:07:59 PM 
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