Tips and Tricks for Public Records Requests from IRE 2022

​Recently, KSL paid for me to attend the 2022 Investigative Reporters and Editors conference in Denver.

The conference was held at the Gaylord Rocky Convention Center Hotel, essentially a giant corporate version of the Great Northern Hotel from Twin Peaks.

IRE has a lot of workshops on data journalism, beat-specific seminars, and career advice, but I chose mainly to primarily attend lectures on finding government records through FOIA and its state law equivalents.
Working in true crime podcasts, public police records and court documents are crucial to researching a story, and archival audio can really bring a story to life, but I really think these tips and tricks are useful to anyone doing investigative journalism.
Does it exist in open records?
Some states or agencies, automatically collect certain records and publish them online. For example, here are the open records from Utah's department of public safety.

Do you know what you're looking for and who has it?

If so, make a public records request. It can be helpful to look up the particular public records act for the place you’re requesting from and try to find a template specific to their statutes:

• Including the legal deadline they must respond to the request.
• Ask them to provide you with information about how to appeal if they deny it
• Give any information you think will be helpful to them in finding it (dates to search)
• Identify yourself as member of the news media. Then they can only charge you “duplication fees”
• Ask them to contact you before charging you to process anything.
  
  

I'll generally call an agency before submitting my formal request and ask them what's the most convenient way for me to submit it to them.

• This reminds them you're a real person and makes them more likely to take your request seriously.
• Write down who you talked to, and set calendar reminders to follow up.
• Bug them, nicely. “Hey, just calling to check…” “My boss is asking me when we’ll get this information.”
  • One speaker suggested the tone you want to take is persistent and slightly annoying soccer mom, or nice polite person with amnesia who keeps asking for updates.
  • If you're working on a team consider playing good cop / bad cop with another team member. Or if things are really dragging, consider turning bad cop yourself.
    
    

Okay, but what if you don't know who has the record or if it even exists?

Think like a document: what might a record look like, and what agencies might also be interested in this information.

Contact all agencies you think might have the info: You never know which agency might have the info and which one might be more responsive to public record requests. For example, with records from a criminal case that went to trial the DA's office, the county clerk, or the police agencies may all have somewhat overlapping sets of documentation.

When in doubt make public records requests from all agencies. But also try to cultivate sources. Talk to PIOs or insiders at those agencies, and see if they have more info about what documents are out there. And what specifically to request.
There are records of what the government keeps / releases to journalists:

• Look at record retention logs to look at what sort of records the government is required to keep.
• FOIA the FOIA logs – Request a list of what documents other people have requested and what requests have been granted. Citing past granted requests can be great to include in your request letter or when talking to a FOIA article.
  • Muckrock.com - is a crowdsourced version of the same information. People submit their requests and the responses they got back from different agencies. This is a great place for finding request templates for the specific state or agency where you're making your request.
• If you're looking for information stored in a table, spreadsheet, or large centralized digital repository, ask for the “data dictionary,” “file index,” “database dictionary."
  • This should give you valuable information about what information is kept, and what precisely to ask for when trying to access that data.
    
    

What do you do if your public records request is rejected?

• Look at other agencies that may have the same/similar data,
  but don't give up on your first request just because it's rejected, or if they give you an unsatisfactory release and you know they have more information.
• Immediately contact them again, "Hey, did you make a mistake?" "I insist that you follow the law and release this information."
• File an appeal. (There may be a time window for filing the appeal. If it lapses, you'll have to file the request again.)
• Request the “downstream records” that resulted from the records request.
  • i. e. Request the emails that resulted from your records request. This may give you insight into why your request was rejected, or show that it was rejected improperly.
• Name and shame. Publish a story about how the agency denied your request and why the public is entitled to these records.
• Sue or at least threatening to sue. "You're wrong to deny this request and will lose when we take you to court."
  • If you're a freelancer or at a small institution contact the Reporters Committee For Freedom of the Press, or The Cornell Law Schooll First Amendment Clinic. (Your local university may also have a similar first amendment clinic, where professors and law students take on reporters cases pro bono.)
• Ask the IRE listserve for advice
• Look at public records lawsuits against the same institution you're trying to get records from. Point out to them if they've lost a case over a similar denial in the past.
• Ask a lawmaker for the same info or ask them to request the same information. Sometimes they have the inside track to government records.
• Get a leak. Talk to your sources from within the agency about how important it is for the public to have this information. Setting up a confidential line of communication like signal or protonmail can help with getting leaks.

Federal Courts
Information from federal courts is sort-of stored online, through the outdated and overly expensive PACER system. PACER stands for the Public Access to Court Electronic Records. You need to make a login and hook up a credit card, and although you get a certain amount of free requests per month, after that point you get charged 10 cents/page. And you get charged before you even get to see the records.

• Unless you're a lawyer, it can be difficult to know what documents are important. But if it's a case that's received media attention pay particular notice to records that people have "requested to be unsealed." Those records may be of interest to you as well
• Court Listener Similarly, some documents on PACER have been made free through a crowdsourced effort. https://courtlistener.com/recap. By installing the Court Listener plugin, any document you request from PACER will automatically be uploaded to the Court Listener database, so others can see it for free. And you can browse through the documents that other users have uploaded.
  • It has search functions, that let you search through case dockets and the full text of documents.
  • You can set up alerts, to be notified when there are updates to an ongoing trial.

​​For additional info, at the conference, experts recommended David Cuillier and Charles Davis's The Art of Access, Strategies for Acquiring Public Records. I'm currently reading the book myself!

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