Transparency nerds! Nominate someone doing awesome work for an SPJ Sunshine Award, due April 9: www.spj.org/sunshine-awa...

It’s funny to me when you see someone hedge on a trivial claim on social media. Someone’s pet dies, and you reply “she looked like a very good cat.” Just in case she was actually a terror to strangers, or secretly running guns or something without your knowledge

The War Horse saw one story find an audience in private messaging groups like WhatsApp and Telegram; San Diego's inewsource, meanwhile, is investing in Nextdoor. www.niemanlab.org/2026/03/nonp...

It Happened to Me: I bought size .38 Muji pens instead of .5. Will I ever recover?

The Pentagon tells reporters to file a FOIA, wait until 2038 to get any info about its war machine. Not to be outdone, the DOJ blames the public for asking how their government works. These stories and more in our secrecy newsletter, The Classifieds.

I joined @kgosztola.bsky.social for this conversation exploring how financial access can be a tool to punish journalists who challenge powerful interests. Check it out and subscribe to Kevin's newsletter.

Free training on Sam.gov from @journoresource.bsky.social harvard.zoom.us/webinar/regi...

“Access to public records is not optional – it is a cornerstone of a functioning democracy,” --FOI Committee Chair @morisy.bsky.social. Recently, @spj-posts.bsky.social named Massachusetts the recipient of its 2026 Black Hole Award.

FOIA request filed Feb. 27, 2006. Response sent March 24, 2026.

Ran into this a while back. Really gross.

NEW: Doug Ford is brazenly going after transparency because he can’t be bothered to use a government cellphone. @justinling.ca joins the pod to talk about the long death of FOI/ATIP systems and how we actually have solutions… just not the will. #cdnpoli #onpoli

We've lost an amazing leader and mentor in DeeDee. Still in shock.

⚫️SPJ has named the State of Massachusetts the 2026 Black Hole Award recipient, a national dishonor recognizing a troubling lack of transparency in government. ☀️During #SunshineWeek, it’s a reminder: open government matters. 🔗Read more: bit.ly/4sY57S6

Want to go to the Collaborative Journalism Summit? We are giving away two registrations on our instagram! Comment to win. www.instagram.com/p/DWHdu53GEkv/

I honestly can't think of a better place to be home to @newsmediahelpdesk.org. We're located at @rjionline.bsky.social and work with students at @mujschool.bsky.social. Here's Editor & Publisher's write-up on our free resource designed to help news publishers.

Christ almighty

is anyone talking about the painful march of time and how everything you ever love will die? might be a good subject for art imho

Awful. A teenager, dead by suicide in an ICE detention center. There is now a crisis of suicide inside the detention system; I have never seen anything like it. Suicide has happened before, but they were very rare. This is the third or fourth this year.

By an 11 vote majority, votes rejected a referendum to purchase additional license plate readers in Burnham, IL (a south suburb of Chicago in Cook County).

Weather caster shares an amazing anecdote about broadcast consultants and *gestures wildly*. www.reddit.com/r/Journalism...

MLA-ACLS-AHA Depositions (6.81 GB) AKA The DOGE Depositions Censored depositions of two members of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) along with two members of the NEH. ddosecrets.org/article/mla-... Help us keep publishing: donorbox.org/ddosecrets

Fraser Nelson's keynote at #CJS2026 is one to catch: she led The Salt Lake Tribune's transition to nonprofit and co-founded the National Trust for Local News. Her Friday morning talk is on fundraising for collaboratives — how to go farther together. May 14-15 at Temple University in Philly.

Philly folks: A friend is being interviewed for a documentary, and they asked about venues that'd be good for taping a segment. Any suggestions for that sort of request?

Looking for large, public interest releases of inboxes (a la Enron emails, Clinton emails, Palin emails, hopefully something more recent).

Playing around with OpenDataPhilly's building footprints. Here's Philly, by population density, in 3D. sstirling.github.io/philly-3d/do...

Breaking: the DOGE deposition videos have been taken off YouTube. On Friday the government asked a judge to intervene, said the videos could cause reputational damage, death threats. Judge agreed, ordered them removed: www.404media.co/doge-deposit...

I understand the goal and the spirit, but right now I would not be creating databases of ICE encounters that (1) require submitters to send over their contact information and ask for sensitive stories; and (2) are obviously subject to public records law and civil/criminal/administrative discovery.

Luck is a variable. Data is a constant. Apply for the Data-Driven Reporting Project by March 31 and turn your investigative hunch into a hard-hitting reality. #DDRP #Journalism

Looking for large, public interest releases of inboxes (a la Enron emails, Clinton emails, Palin emails, hopefully something more recent).

Happy #FOIAFriday! Just got a response to a FOIA request I submitted to DOJ's Criminal Division in .... *checks notes* 2016!

An open statement of the regime's intentions both in Iran and in US media.

Most people don't realize how much of the U.S. immigration detention system is run by private companies and how much money is involved. 🧵

👋 Come find us at #SunshineFest next week and see for yourself how we're using simulation games to promote transparency and accountability! Here's where we'll be... cc: @brechnerfoi.bsky.social @muckrock.com @knightfoundation.org

Apply now! Like, later today! If you're interested.

We need more excellent news and transparency tools. If you're building them, and your project is less than a decade old, here's a great opportunity. Unrelated, but I'd also love to connect with you! thenextchallenge.com/infrastructure

I filed a FOIA request with the George W. Bush Library for files on Elliott Abrams back in 2017. I just got an email asking if I was still interested in the request since it's been so many years. These kinds of emails are common but I always want to respond that it's not my fault it's been so long.

I wanted to learn more about the collage artist Mary Lum, and was surprised to find her included in Grokepedia, which helpfully informs me that she was born in 1951 in St. Cloud, MN, and died in 1815 at the Pennsylvania Hospital for the Insane.

New open GitHub repo from Montana Free Press! https://github.com/mtfreepress/major-montana-landowners

NEW: The #Framingham Police Department says it determined that two police officers violated a policy against “criminal conduct”—but the department has provided few details about the allegations and has demanded $525 for the officers’ internal affairs records. #Massachusetts

just posted a new paper, How Tech Took Over, to SSRN. It's about how decades of legal and policy interventions made the tech industry an essential partner in public governance. I map the kinds of functions tech cos are performing today, and I argue that their activities are salient to con law.

I now get 600 of these emails every day: "Just like how MuckRock Foundation empowers transparency through accessible government documents, Pacific Associates empowers financial freedom by providing strategic no-interest programs to tackle high-interest debt." I now support a 1-cent-per-email tax.

On Courage: How to Be a Dissident in an Age of Fear, @juliaangwin.com's new book, is now available for pre-order! www.harpercollins.com/products/on-... www.amazon.com/dp/B0FT75P47...

It'll be inevitable. Paramount/WB is going to be carrying $80b in debt after this merger, $60b from the buyout alone. Assume they're getting 7% interest rates (which they're not, the debt is rated junk), that's $4b in debt payments every year just for the merger.

Calling all technologists, artists and other creative visionaries: The Library of Congress has opened the call for the next Innovator in Residence! Apply by 2pm ET April 10 newsroom.loc.gov/news/library...

kairos is hiring a “gaming organizer” kairosfellowship.recruitee.com/o/gamer-orga...

SCOOP: An internal DHS document obtained by 404 Media shows for the first time CBP used location data sourced from the online advertising industry to track phone locations. This surveillance can happen through all sorts of apps, such as video games, news apps, weather trackers, and dating apps.

It seems the President is caught in a time loop, replenishing supplies before they were used and now using them after they’ve been given away.

This story, from @natezuke.bsky.social, is absolutely wild. A trans woman who never changed her gender marker was issued a letter invalidating her license. At the DMV they cut up her license, which had an "M" marker. www.assignedmedia.org/breaking-new...

Documenting U.S. planning for the Iran strike will be harder than documenting the lead-up to the Iraq War thanks to this admin's animosity to record-keeping. Still, docs released through FOIA re Iraq provide offer a road map of what to ask for. The best examples are from @nsarchive.bsky.social.

Blatant retaliatory detention in Key West for filming a Border Patrol agent gwenfilosa.substack.com/p/video-your...