FOIA 101: Tips and Tricks to Make You a Transparency Master
Basics / Intermediate/Advanced / MuckRock Site Guides / Exemptions / Agency-Specific Advice / Topic-Specific Tips / Presidential Records / Student Resources / State Maps / Ongoing Series
Basics
Never filed a public records request? Not sure what a “FOIA” is or if you know how to pronounce it? Start here.
What’s considered a public record?
Fee categories
First time FOIA request flowchart
Five tips for beginners
Leaks and FOIA FAQ
Intermediate/Advanced
Appealing fee categories and waivers
Dealing with excessive redactions
FOIA inspiration from #IRE2017
Five lessons from “FOIA Strategies and Tactics”
How to get a faster FOIA response
Reminder that Congress is (increasingly) exempt from FOIA
Tips for better FOIA appeals
Searching for specific sections of records
Sunshine Week 2019 public records reporting round-up
What to do about “Still Interested” letters
What to do when an agency claims not to have records you know it has
What the 2016 FOIA reforms mean for requesters
MuckRock Site Guides
How to explore MuckRock’s public archive of FOIA requests and releases
How to use MuckRock to look at your state’s public records law
Looking for daily #FOIA inspiration? Check out our new site, Muck.Rocks
We want you to build a project with MuckRock
Why can’t I upload my existing FOIA requests to MuckRock?
Assignments
MuckRock Assignments: Your newest tool for audience feedback
Tap your readers, followers, and fans to help crowdsource your FOIA finds
What we’ve learned helping crowdsource over 10,000 pages of government records
Crowdfunding
Give the gift of government accountability year-round with MuckRock Crowdfunds
Learn how to crowdfund your request on MuckRock from the pros
DocumentCloud
Getting the most out of DocumentCloud
Exemptions
For what reasons could an agency withhold or redact your records?
Federal FOIA exemptions overview
The Glomar “neither confirm nor deny” exemption
Agency-Specific Advice
CIA
The ultimate guide to searching CIA’s declassified archives
Using exemption codes to find documents hidden in CREST
Department of Defense
Tracking down Department of Defense contracts
FBI
A FOIA beginner’s guide to requesting a FBI file
The #AppleVSFBI FOIA Primer
Five ways to use FOIA to explore the FBI’s 110 year history
Getting your own FBI file
How to read an FBI file: A beginner’s guide
Telling the FBI where to search
What is an FBI background check?
NSA
A beginner’s guide to FOIA-ing the NSA
Topic Specific Tips
Autopsy reports
Environmental reports
The JFK assassination records
Immigration records
Mueller Report
A guide to the FOIA exemptions in the newly-released version of the Mueller Report
What will the Special Counsel’s Office release?
#NODAPL / pipeline records
Protest records
Private prison records
SF-86-gate
Presidential Records
Presidential records primer
Trump Administration records
White House’s FOIA exemption
White House visitor logs
Student Resources
College journalist’s FOIA guide
College sports records guide
FOIA 4 Kidz lesson plan
High school journalist’s FOIA guide
State Maps
MuckRock request data shows big difference in backlogs between states
Response deadline map
State by State records guide
Ongoing Series
#FOIAFriday Round-up
FOIA Slack Chats
Requester’s Voice interviews
State of State Public Records Laws
Sunshine Spotlight: Massachusetts
Suggestion Form
Image via the National Archives Flickr
190 Articles
How data can power public health investigations — through collaboration
In a new story with DataJournalism.com, reporters Dillon Bergin and Betsy Ladyzhets shared how MuckRock collaborates with both experts and other reporters to pursue major data journalism projects.
Air Quality Access: How local government is planning (or not) to protect your air
In the late 1980s, an area of the Jurupa Valley in Riverside, California began a transformation that would turn it from a community of sprawling dairy farms to hub for enormous warehouses. David Danelski, then an investigative reporter for the Riverside-Press Enterprise, unraveled the details through public records on town planning and found one important document missing from projects approved by county officials for more than a decade: the environmental impact statement. Here are his tips on this and other key records requests you can file.
Air quality access: Using complaints, violations and fines to pinpoint local polluters
Freelance journalist Monica Vaughan was reporting on air pollution in California’s San Joaquin Valley when the words of one mother changed her perspective. “I just scan the stories looking for the sentence about whether or not it’s safe to live here. And I can never find that,” Vaughan remembered the woman saying.
In a second guide on air pollution, we bring together advice from reporters like Vaughan and examples that might help you uncover unsafe air in your community. From intial complaints to sustained violations, we give you the tools to ask your local government how it regulates polluters in your area