Stories that used public records

• Broken Homes: How Award-Winning, Dream ‘Green’ Houses Turned Into Nightmares, Phoenix New Times, by Elizabeth Whitman, May 9 2019. Try to list all of the government agencies – federal, state and local – involved in the saga, and the records that might come from them. Pay special attention to the different picture you get by requesting the documents and data from the agency vs. looking it up online.

TK: Boston Globe courts story.

The Los Angeles Times’ 2010 series on Bell, Calif., small-town corruption, winner of the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service.

• “Why so secret, Kansas?”, Kansas City Star, Nov. 12, 2017. An award-winning series showing the effects of secrecy in government. Think about this story as you navigate Arizona’s public records atmosphere – you’ll see some similarities and some stark differences. It’s also reminds us why access to seemingly sensitive information is so important. Pulitzer Prize finalist, 2018.

• Boston Globe 2018: “For some State Police, it’s a posting in Paradise,” by Kay Lazar and Todd Wallack. Be sure to read Todd’s tweetstorm on what it took to get this data, and how he got past bureaucratic and public records battles.

Since it's #FOIA Friday, I wanted to say a few words about public records and persistence. And explain how it took three years to research an article I wrote with @GlobeKayLazar https://t.co/EloAr9mZsS

— Todd Wallack (@TWallack) August 3, 2018

Stories about public records

• “I’ve sent out 1,018 Open Records Requests, and This is What I’ve Learned”, ProPublica Illinois, Sandhya Kambhampati (now at the LA Times), 2018

• Q&A: The Story Behind the Post’s Investigation on Guns, with David Fallis of the Washington post, American Journalism Review, Jan. 13, 2014.