NOTE: This shouldn’t show up in our site for the grad project. It is only for the fall semester. Check links when I use this again.
This week we’ll concentrate most of your work on public records and your projects, but add in some demonstrations of one of data journalism’s most difficult and frustrating elements: extracting something of use from documents you get in PDF form. You don’t have exercises, but you do have some substantial reading.
Chapters 3-5 and chapters 7-8. Skip the exercises at the end of each chapter. I suggest changing the order of the chapters to more closely represent the chronology of an actual request :
“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.
Q&A: The Story Behind the Post’s Investigation on Guns, with David Fallis of the Washington post, American Journalism Review, Jan. 13, 2014.
Arizona Ombudsman’s guide to public records Pay attention to specific references to journalists, costs, and the form of the records.
Read the FAQ and browse the Arizona Republic’s azpublicinfo.com. From its home page, use the search or browse function to find some agencies that might relate to your topic. Read the FAQ.
Reporters’ Committee for the Freedom of the Press Arizona open records policy. You don’t need to read this, just know it exists as a resource when you need it and what information it might contain.
Center for Public Integrity’s State Integrity Index for Arizona, by Evan Wyloge, 2015. I’m not sure I agree with the overall grade, but the summary is good.
The slides from class along with a recording of a similar lecture given to masters’ boot camp students in September 2018.
Finding data on your beat, Sarah Cohen. It’s old, but it doesn’t change.
The Top 38 Excuses government agencies give for not being able to fill your data request. This is dated and a little snarky, but you’ll get the idea. I don’t recommend using this attitude with government agencies – they have legitimate concerns and you should work with them. But the excuses are still pretty common
Some reporters call initial research on projects “reporting from the outside in”. This strategy is a good one for any long-term reporting project, but is particularly important when requesting public records. You should know the correct answers to your questions before approaching the key official who will make or break your request.
Together, we’ll settle on a question or set of records to explore for your project. By the end of the day, we should have a good sense of what the records might explore
Split up the pre-reporting among your group. You should be able to complete much of this on Tuesday, but may need to finish up after class.
Optional readings:
Today I would like to describe two of the biggest impediments to the effective use of FOIA among journalists, and I detail others in my written statement. But at core, they all suggest a widespread but wrong default position that records belong to the Government and not to the public. This position turns FOIA upside down. Instead of the Government convincing the public that certain information must be kept secret, in practice the public must convince officials that it should be released.
Reporters had historically gone undercover to learn about the workings of important institutions. However this [new FOIA law in the 1960s], combined with the widespread use of new copy machines, changed both the nature and ethics of investigative and beat reporting, ushering in a documents and data-based journalism that was less anecdotal and less ethically hazardous.