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For the Record: Celebrate the Fourth with FOIA
Get in the spirit of the holidays by making your own public records request or taking some inspiration from your fellow MuckRockers.
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Release Notes: Knight Election Hub, more OCR tools and expanded raw email access
Over the past few weeks, the MuckRock tech team has focused on several key updates and additions. These include the development of the Knight Election Hub, which offers vital resources to U.S. newsrooms for comprehensive coverage of the 2024 elections.
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For the Record: How to background political candidates through public records
As November inches closer, June’s #FOIAFriday session explored what type of public records can be used to investigate political candidates who are running in the 2024 election cycle. Friday’s session covered how to request these overlooked documents, including military personnel records, voter lists and Paycheck Protection Program loans.
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For the Record: Navigating MuckRock’s FOIA Log Explorer
MuckRock has archived data on over 160,000 FOIA requests, including the Environmental Protection Agency and Customs and Border Protection.
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Search across almost 170,000 requests via MuckRock’s expanded FOIA Log Explorer
Over the last few weeks, we have been hard at work on a range of improvements to MuckRock and DocumentCloud, but FOIA fans have something special to celebrate: We’ve imported many of the requests from FOIAonline into a searchable database which allows you to filter, browse and even re-request almost 170,000 requests with just a few clicks.
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‘They bungled it:’ NIH documents reveal how $1.6 billion long Covid initiative has failed so far to meet its goals
Budget and other project documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act show how the National Institutes of Health set up its flagship long Covid research initiative, including the scientific expertise that government reviewers prioritized in selecting research teams to lead the RECOVER program and the early goals and timelines. Experts who reviewed the contracts and project documents say the agency set itself up for failure.
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MuckRock to SCOTUS: Requesting information is not a crime
In 2017, Priscilla Villarreal — sharing updates through her popular La Gordiloca Facebook page — first confirmed with a government source and then reported on a series of deaths in and near Laredo, Texas. They were not unusual stories for Villarreal to share — she has gained wide attention for local updates and breaking news on public corruption and thousands tune in to her videos and updates.
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Help track PPP loans associated with 2024 election candidates
MuckRock is working to obtain PPP loans by candidates in the 2024 election by using public records.
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For the Record: How Fiquem Sabendo used records requests and DocumentCloud to reveal corporate card expenditures
In Brazil, presidents and other top government officials have the right to use “corporate cards” to cover occasional travel expenses and other small value purchases on behalf of the federal government. In January 2023, the journalism non-profit Fiquem Sabendo secured access to the invoices for these cards, and last week, the Brazilian newsroom detailed how they meticulously scanned and organized these documents, making them accessible for the first time.
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For the Record: Requesting data inventories
MuckRock’s #FOIAFriday webinar series continued last Friday with a step-by-step guide on how to request data inventories from federal and state agencies.
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Release Notes: More information when scheduled Add-Ons stop working
DocumentCloud now allows Add-On developers to customize the emails sent when a scheduled run fails, making it easier to understand why something stopped working and potentially fix it. The Regex Extractor Add-On now enables tagging documents when a matching regular expression is found, opening up new ways to sort and filter large document collections with ease.
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For the Record: Appealing an unduly burdensome denial in Illinois
This week’s For the Record shares how reporters at MuckRock and the Cicero Independiente overcame rejection in their “Air We Breathe” series.
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For the Record: Michigan bill could expand FOIA law to governor and legislature
Two bipartisan bills in Michigan could expand the state’s Freedom of Information Act to allow requests for documents in the governor’s office and the state legislature.
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Release Notes: Making it easier to sort, filter and reprocess document OCR
Since our last release notes, we released a new Add-On OCR Tagger that allows you to tag your document(s) based on the OCR engine used and we added better logging for when scheduled Add-Ons like Klaxon or Scraper get disabled. This helps more easily diagnose and correct outages that impact Add-Ons.
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For the Record: New bill in Louisiana would exempt economic development projects from the state’s public record law
MuckRock’s For the Record column goes to Louisiana to understand how a new proposed legislation would exclude a local government’s “active” negotiations in economic development projects.
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Were you treated unjustly by police in New York? Are you a former officer with a story to tell? We want to hear from you.
A team of investigative reporters working with New York Focus and MuckRock would like to hear from New Yorkers across the state about their experiences with law enforcement.
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Behind the Badge: In New York City Homeless Shelters, the Same ‘Peace Officers’ Abuse Residents
Previously unreleased disciplinary files expose officers who beat, slap, and pepper spray the residents they’re supposed to protect. Most are back at work within a month.
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For the Record: New Utah law redefines what is a public record
Utah’s Senate Bill 240 allows for the exemption of elected officials’ calendars from the state’s public records law.
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The inside story on a billion-dollar chemical company’s fight to keep its secrets from the public
After the Cicero Independiente and MuckRock published investigative articles about air pollution and the chemicals company Koppers, it hired a public-relations firm to organize a secret, behind-the-scenes campaign to influence local officials.
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La historia interna de la lucha de una empresa química multimillonaria por ocultar sus secretos al público
Después que Cicero Independiente y MuckRock publicaran artículos de investigación sobre la contaminación atmosférica y la empresa química Koppers, ésta contrató a una empresa de relaciones públicas para organizar una campaña secreta entre bastidores para influir a los funcionarios locales.
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For the Record: What’s next for public records law in New Jersey and Arkansas?
This week’s For the Record is turning to New Jersey and Arkansas that have active legislation that could modernize public record laws in their states.
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Release Notes: Improved sorting, new revision control documentation and more
In recent weeks, we’ve rolled out a few updates on DocumentCloud. Users can now sort documents on DocumentCloud by their key/value pairs. We’ve documented API access for document revision control. Finally, a fellow DocumentCloud user contributed a write-up on how to run your own version of Klaxon.
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Automate your beat: Unredact documents, monitor websites and much more with DocumentCloud
Ever had a spreadsheet-turned-PDF you’re stuck untangling? Wish story ideas came right to you? Over the past two years, MuckRock’s DocumentCloud tool has built several ways to automate common journalism and research tasks, taking once-cumbersome processes and breaking them down to just a few clicks.
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For the Record: The state of new public records legislation in Colorado and Kentucky
This week’s For the Record tackles proposed state legislation in Colorado and Kentucky that would change how public records are accessed.
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Documenting Brazil’s January coup attempt using DocumentCloud
Brazilian newsroom Aos Fatos shows how they used DocumentCloud to pull images, audio files and videos from social media accounts.