FOIA Fest is the Chicago Headline Club’s signature event dedicated to public records reporting. This year, it’s Saturday, March 21 (you can still get tickets).
Ahead of the annual public records conference, FOIA Fest speakers shared their best tips for filing FOIA requests and other in-depth, investigative reporting.
Maya Dukmasova, Senior Reporter, Injustice Watch:
Use the same template for all your requests.
Jim Daley, Investigations Editor, South Side Weekly:
Create a FOIA tracker — even a simple spreadsheet with submission date, due date, response, and follow-ups. Don’t be shy about reaching out to investigative journalists in Chicago; they’re friendly and helpful.
Matt Kiefer, Assistant Professor, Medill School:
File FOIAs every Friday.
Joe Mahr, Investigative Reporter, Chicago Tribune:
Read the law, attorney general opinions, and case law — Google is your friend.
Nell Salzman, Local Investigations Fellow, New York Times:
Tell agencies you want to make their lives as easy as possible. Involving them early can speed up the process and lead to better information long-term.
Sarah Karp, Education Reporter at WBEZ:
Do your homework before putting in a FOIA request. Try to get your hands on manuals that describe how data is kept or talk to people on the ground who are the ones entering data or providing information to the centralized agency.
Milka Koumpilova, Senior Reporter at Chalkbeat Chicago:
If possible, always try to do some homework before crafting your FOIA request: What data and documents might be available? What does the organization that maintains the information call it exactly? In what format is that information kept?
Cam Rodriguez, Data Reporter:
Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good. If your records request isn’t perfect, the FOIA officer will let you know; don’t let it keep you from filing. Also — befriend archivists, librarians, sysadmins, FOIA officers, paralegals, executive assistants and administrative employees. They’re the ones actually doing the work! Thank them early and often.
Amy Qin, Data Reporter at WBEZ:
One way to think about FOIAs is to think about what types of records are collected as part of a government process that you’re interested in. For example: if you put yourself in the shoes of someone who got a parking ticket and whose car got booted…there’s the ticket itself, which includes the citation, amount fined, location of the citation, and date. These are all FOIA-able. Then what happens? Either you pay your ticket or you contest it. Where do you go to contest? The Department of Administrative Hearings. Their records are FOIA-able too. And all of these records are FOIA-able en masse — you could ask for all parking tickets over a given period of time and use that information to see what wards have the highest number of parking ticket citations.
Sophia Van Pelt, Senior Policy Analyst, BGA Policy
Tip one, send a FOIA request over the perfect FOIA request. You’ll get something back and learn something for next time. Tip two is to go read the law around whatever you’re requesting, you can often learn useful terminology and such from seeing what the statute says and use that to write sharper requests.
Francia Garcia Hernandez, Pilsen, Little Village and Back of the Yards Reporter, Block Club Chicago
Don’t get discouraged by challenges obtaining information from federal immigration agencies. There are often local sources of information that can support an investigation and can be FOIA’ed.
Emeline Posner, Reporter, Investigative Project on Race and Equity
Don’t wait for a story to file public records requests. Regularly request data, internal policies, organizational charts, record retention schedules and FOIA logs. Building baseline familiarity with agencies will make investigations, sourcing and writing more effective.
Monica Eng, Reporter, Axios Chicago
If you’re worried your request will be rejected as overly cumbersome, break it into multiple, narrower requests.
Kiel Porter, Reporter, Bloomberg
Set aside a couple of hours every week specifically to file FOIA requests.
Steve Warmbir, Senior Investigations Editor, Illinois Answers Project / Better Government Association
The better you understand how a government agency actually works, the more effectively you can use FOIA to obtain public documents.
Jeff Arnold, National Digital Reporter, NewsNation
Let curiosity drive your questions and fact-finding, then support them with strong reporting, storytelling and sourcing.
Jennifer Smith Richards, Reporter, ProPublica
Set aside a few minutes each week to file FOIAs and review responses — consistency builds strong habits.
Tatiana Walk-Morris, Independent Journalist
Be as specific as possible. Avoid phrasing such as “any,” “all” or “including but not limited to…” Some FOIA Officers will use these phrases to deny requests for being too broad or requesting information that is exempt from disclosure. You don’t want to be denied for failing to be too broad, because that will delay how soon you can get responsive records. If you need help narrowing down your request, consult with sources who are knowledgeable about the records you want, review prior coverage of that topic or review the FOIA reading room/previously released records to know what can and cannot be released. This will help you be more specific and possibly get the records released faster.
Alex V. Hernandez, Neighborhood Reporter, Block Club Chicago
A google calendar is your best friend. Use it to keep track of deadlines from government departments and officials you’re sending FOIAs out to in order to keep your life organized (and when officials miss a deadline).