Welcome to Media Requestor

A transparency journal for storytellers

This is Media Requestor. It’s a journal about transparency, democracy, and public records-based storytelling. I spent years as a practicing lawyer who worked closely with reporters to share information with the public. For the past few years I’ve been researching, writing, teaching, and organizing. Part side hustle, part wish fulfillment, this project is an attempt to assign myself a FOIA beat.

Using transparency laws to score records that become stories, seeing how those stories can reshape our understanding of the world, and helping others do the same, are among my favorite ways to spend time. Another is opening a piping hot stack of new records after it pops in the inbox.

I started this space to share what I’ve learned over the past 20 years of trying to expose truths about governments using the documents they create, instead of the narratives they provide. How agencies respond to information requests can reveal what they may be hiding and why. Public records work acknowledges Douglass’s maxim that “Power concedes nothing without a demand.” Engaging systems of power with legal demands or documents, rather than polite requests for comment, offers us a window into what they’ll concede and what they’d prefer to withhold.

Most MR posts will center a particular document request or set of requests about a specific event. The portion of the post I’ll always make available to everyone will share whatever documents or responses we received from the request. Public records belong to everyone, and until we secure Release-to-One, Release-to-All policies (or “R21-R2A”, more on this in a future post) in more jurisdictions, my commitment is to de-hoard and publicly archive records we’ve received to the greatest extent possible.

I’ll also try to to contextualize these documents with narrative around what motivated the request and what we’d hoped or expected to find when we made it.

If there’s enough interest going forward, in paid sections, podcasts, and zoom events, I’ll discuss the FOIA techniques and strategic approaches we might use to collectively improve accountability journalism and records-based narrative work. I think that requires a capacious understanding of our rights as media requestors under state and federal law, and a willingness to make FOIA the story more often.

I’m still learning how to share all of these ideas, so expect this space to shift and grow in response to the audience that forms around it. For now, welcome. I’m glad you’re here, and I can’t wait to share and learn together with you.