Citizen journalists
: Tim Porter sends us to a wonderful feature at The Brownsville Herald: A gaggle of reporters goes out into the community and asks for public records and then reports what happens. Great reading. And, as Tim says, anyone can do this; any citizen has the right to open records. So go to your town hall. Ask for the salary and expense records of your public officials. Then print the results on your weblog. Watch what happens.
3 responses to “Citizen journalists”
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I frequently teach both grad and undergrad budget courses. You wouldn’t believe the hassle they get when they go to local govts and ask for copies of the budget, clearly required by state law. When they point out the law, they are then frequently charged “copying” fees (sometimes for having someone stand by and watch them copy it, evidently so they won’t abscond with what is apparently the only copy), or given a line-item budget that is all but useless, or some other ploy. The nice thing is that then they believe me when I tell them budget information is power. After all, why else would they hang on to it so hard?
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Very seldom do citizens ask for public records. The vast majority of the people looking for information are not acting in the public interest. Our business owners in the city were complaining about telephone solicitation calls. I found out that telephone solicitors were getting lists of Occupational Licenses (computer printed with telephone numbers) for 15 cents a sheet. So I changed the form and made the phone number an optional field, yet every business filled it in. Then I changed the computer print program to omit the telephone number. A lot of businesses remarked the next year that their nuisance calls had dropped off dramatically. When the requestor asked why the phone number wasn
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It is very disturbing that so many government employees at all levels forget the most basic thing: THEY work for US.
The founding fathers would be horrified to see how some of this as turned out….
