Apply now: FOIA Fest Boot Camp is now accepting applications
The Chicago Headline Club is now accepting applications for its 2023 FOIA Fest Boot Camp. Apply today!
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Contract: Video Production
The Chicago Headline Club is seeking a producer to help process videos from FOIA Fest 2022. The work requires producing ~30 session videos, which involves: making one cut adding pre-written metadata, including title and description uploading video to YouTube or similar service Work is estimated to take no more than […]
FOIA Fest postscript: Q&A with the Illinois Attorney General’s Office
Editor’s note: The Chicago Headline Club invited Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul to speak about the state of public records access at this year’s FOIA Fest. He couldn’t make it, but his office offered to respond to questions in writing. We asked about the state of the Attorney General’s website […]
FOIA Fest Code of Conduct
FOIA FEST EVENT SAFETY CONTACT: If you would like to make any reports, please email foiafest24@gmail.com. The Chicago Headline Club is committed to providing a welcoming and harassment-free environment for participants of all races, gender and trans statuses, sexual orientations, physical abilities, physical appearances, and beliefs. We’ve adopted this code […]
Apply here: 2022 FOIAFest Boot Camp
The Chicago Headline Club is now accepting applications for its 2022 FOIAFest Boot Camp, the two-week training program launched last year and integrated into the annual FOIAFest conference. The Boot Camp is intended to support the work of early career journalists of color in Chicago and will partner reporters who […]
Investigative Stories and FOIA: How To Pitch and Keep Organized
By Lu Calzada Working to uncover important stories can be overwhelming for any reporter, to say nothing of having to organize documents and work with editors who may not see the story’s vision. One of the best ways to overcome this obstacle, according to journalists on a panel at FOIAFest […]
Case Study: CBS2 Investigates Wrongful Chicago Police Raids
By Deanna Trejo Years of investigations by CBS2 Chicago into botched police raids, such as the ones that propelled Anjanette Young and Peter Mendez into the national spotlight and led to sweeping changes in procedures, all began with a single press release. That release was about a settlement between the […]
Panelists Offer Tips and Tricks for Navigating Federal FOIAs
By Rylee Tan Knowing how to file a state FOIA is one thing but seeking public records on the federal level presents an entire new set of challenges, according to a panel at FOIAFest 2021. Speaking Saturday morning, two attorneys and an Associated Press editor walked listeners through some of […]
FOIA Fest: Finding Housing Data During a Crisis
By Deanna Trejo Imagine that you want to tell the stories of housing insecurity brought on by the COVID pandemic and you’re trying to track down sketchy landlords who don’t want to be found. Not only is there no app for that, until recently there wasn’t any hard data to […]