Got the Act passed so you would use it

What a treat the Freedom of Information Act and similar state laws are.  Besides the First Amendment, they might be the best dispensation society gives journalists. For FOIA basics, check out the free FOIA course at NewsU, the letter generator, and the state-by-state guide.

FOIA requests, because of the time and (sometimes) expense they require, are most commonly used on large stories.  The best way to ensure that you’re ready to file FOIAs when that huge story comes along, though, is to supplement everyday stories with FOIA’ed documents. Plus, it’s good to have a working knowledge of FOIA when a public official denies you a document. Here are three easy stories that anyone can pull off using FOIA requests.

Police reports

Even the safest campuses have crimes. If you’re lucky (from a news perspective), your campus gets a good amount of crimes that produce a lot of  public police documents. Some police reports can be picked up at the station, but it’s a good idea to know your open records law in case recalcitrant (or just lazy) officers don’t want to find the files.

Other times, FOIA laws can help you investigate shadier things, like police brutality through police complaints. For example, there’s a theft case at Georgetown that seems to involve students but was never adequately resolved. It’s the perfect opportunity for a FOIA request on all the documents relating to the case.

Restaurant health inspections

Last summer, I wanted to find the health inspections at Georgetown’s cafeteria, so I filed a request for the health inspections of the cafeteria and several Georgetown restaurants. This alone would have made at least a blog post, but the request’s value exploded when a food poisoning outbreak at Georgetown made cafeteria cleanliness an issue.

While you may not get mass food poisoning at your school, health inspections for popular restaurants and the school cafeteria are great to have on hand.

Emails about anything!

My favorite part of FOIA is how easily you can get at public employees’ official email accounts. It’s like legal hacking! Seeing emails is a great way to get the inside story behind a decision-making process or an investigation. When the Georgetown food poisoning case turned weird, I FOIA’ed Department of Health emails about the outbreak.

If you go to a public school, you’re in an even better position because you can FOIA school records, including purchases and (usually) official correspondence between university officials. For extra fun, post the most interesting files on your paper’s blog or website using Scribd.

It’s always best to check if you can get the documents without a FOIA, but if you can’t, there’s no reason not to use this incredible power afforded us.

How does your campus paper use FOIA or similar open records laws?

Photo from Flickr user Patrick J Dodson used under a Creative Commons license

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