The same applies with public records: While you’re unlikely to get very far requesting a state agency’s records on infectious diseases, you’re much more likely to strike gold if you already know you’re seeking six fields from form B24067, collected by the state’s department of public health, for instance. The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press also has a very useful Open Government Guide, with breakdowns of every state’s public records laws, detailing what’s public and what’s not.Ģ) Order from the menu: Cohen points out that you wouldn’t go to a restaurant and say, “I’d like some food, please.” Instead, you’d peruse the menu and order, say, a Cobb salad. Nearly every state has a guide to public records laws, whether it’s from the legislature, press association or other group. So how do you figure out exactly which databases and records you should be submitting FOIA requests, particularly when you’re stuck on the outside looking in? Here are a few key tips from Cohen’s quick master class in public records reporting:ġ) Know the law: Before you start, learn your state’s laws on public records. Doing so makes it much harder for agencies to claim they don’t. “Our job is to figure out before we even start which artifacts exist,” Cohen said. bureaucrat precisely which building, room and box held the death records she was seeking, suddenly rendering the agency’s denials implausible. In Cohen’s telling, the legendary reporter once told a stonewalling D.C. Katherine Boo, Cohen’s former colleague at The Post, was reportedly a master at this technique. “That’s the goal: You never ask a question from the government that you don’t already know the answer to.”
#PUBLIC RECORDS WIZARD FULL#
“The idea is that you start gathering some string, you start talking to people who might be affected by a system, and before you get to anyone in the government, you know way more than they do,” Cohen told a room full of reporters and editors at the 2019 Data Fellowship last week. Veteran journalist Sarah Cohen, a public records wizard who spent most of her career at The New York Times and The Washington Post, likes to talk about the power of “reporting from the outside in.”
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