Politics and Government

Diana Fuentes, executive director of Investigative Reporters and Editors, discusses accountability journalism and reporting on state politics. The host of the webinar is Carla Anne Robbins, senior fellow at CFR and former deputy editorial page editor at the New York Times.  TRANSCRIPT FASKIANOS: Welcome to the Council on Foreign Relations Local Journalists Webinar. I’m Irina Faskianos, vice president for the National Program and Outreach here at CFR. CFR is an independent and nonpartisan membership organization, think tank, and publisher focused on U.S. foreign policy. CFR is also the publisher of Foreign Affairs magazine. As always, CFR takes no institutional positions on matters of policy. This webinar is part of CFR’s Local Journalists Initiative, created to help you draw connections between the local issues you cover and national and international dynamics. Our programming puts you in touch with CFR resources and expertise on international issues and provides a forum for sharing best practices. We are delighted to have over ninety participants from forty-three states joining us today. And thank you for joining this discussion, which will be on the record. The video and transcript will be posted on our website after the fact, at CFR.org/localjournalists. We are pleased to have Diana Fuentes and host Carla Anne Robbins talking today about reporting on state house politics and elected officials. Diana Fuentes is the executive director of Investigative Reporters and Editors, IRE. Previously, she was a deputy metro editor at San Antonio Express-News. She has over thirty years of journalism experience, including roles as a state house bureau chief, editor, and publisher. Carla Anne Robbins is a senior fellow at CFR and cohost of CFR podcast The World Next Week. She also serves as a faculty director of the Master of International Affairs Program and clinical professor of national security studies at Baruch College’s Marxe School of Public and International Affairs. And previously she was deputy editorial page editor at the New York Times and chief diplomatic correspondent at the Wall Street Journal. So thank you very much to both of you for being with us. I’m going to turn it over to Carla to have an initial conversation with Diana. And then we will open up to all of you for your questions and comments. And hopefully you can share your best practices as well. So, Carla, over to you. ROBBINS: Irina, thank you. And, Diana, thank you so much for doing this. I know that you are traveling right now. You were at the NABJ conference. Is that where you are? FUENTES: Yes. Yes, we’re going to be doing some training here at the NABJ conference here in Chicago. ROBBINS: That’s great. So we will talk about training from IRE as well, which is great. So I wanted to start out and talk about the question of what newspapers can do. The assumption I’ve always had is that investigative work—and that really is sort of the most ambitious way of talking about holding people accountable, but really what we do as journalists is hold people accountable. But the assumption is that investigative work in particular is really expensive. You know, it takes dedicated teams. It takes a lot of time. You know, my friend Jeff Leen, Washington Post, before that, Miami Herald, and worked with my husband at the Herald, he used to say that the biggest challenge of investigations is knowing when you don’t have it, when to stop. But that takes a lot of time and a lot of, you know, judgment. You know, that brings a lot of resources and a lot of bandwidth, and that a lot of local newsrooms really don’t have these days. So could we start out, you know, talking about one of two of your recent award winners and finalists for local news organizations that did great work, even with limited resources? FUENTES: Yeah. I think, to just set the stage first, I do want to say that I worked a lot with community papers on the Texas-Mexico border. Small papers who have, you know, circulations of just a few thousand, for example. I think we can go to places like the Uvalde Leader News, where they had the terrible shooting, and all those children were killed and the teachers. And places like that that have actually been able to do good investigative work. And I think that we—I think you’re right, that a lot of people tend to think it’s very expensive, very time consuming. But the reality is that every journalist is an investigative journalist. That’s what we do. That’s what—we hold people accountable. It’s what we do. The main thing about it is really staying organized and setting aside time. It is—we, the small papers, the small newsrooms, the little nonprofits that have been popping up everywhere, we don’t have, for example, the luxury of, say, six months undivided attention on one project. But we can set aside time, if you work with your editor. And it is mostly—that is the biggest thing that I tell people. You need to say every Friday morning, for example, I know that I don’t have to cover city council. I don’t have to cover school district that day. What day are you free? What morning are you free? You set aside and you put it in your calendar. I’m going to spend these hours either making FOI requests, making phone calls, looking through records. But that is time dedicated. That’s primarily what you want to do. It’s key. That’s very important. But, yes. There are—people win awards. People do very good work at the local level. I want to say that, for example, there’s one particular paper that I wanted to share with you all. The—let’s see, right here—the Malheur Enterprise out of Oregon. They actually have an interesting way of doing things. They’re a small—let me see if I can share this with you all quick here. This newspaper, for example, the Malheur Enterprise, family owned, has been around a long time. They are, as—I like that they put this in their “about” section—it is a little paper. Look, it’s a small, small, just very hometown kind of place, 33,000 residents. And yet they have done, and they have won some awards in the past for stories that they do because they think it’s important. They cover regular stories. They’ve had wildfires in their backyard. They cover the pancake dinners. They do all that kind of stuff that we all—when you’re in a small place, that needs to be done. But they also do things where they found out police chief—they did this whole report on how the police chief had a reputation, innovation, strong policing. But then they found out he was doing a lot of stuff that he should not have been doing. It took them a while because they had to do other work during the week, but they found out that it was a staffing issue. They found out that he had to be—he started a whole bunch of things that he should not have been doing. He was taking illegal drugs from police files. He—all kinds of things. It took them time, but what they did was, again, they were organized. They set aside time to do this sort of work. And little by little, they found it. They had to go against locals who thought this guy was wonderful, because for many years he was a very good cop. But, little by little, you—it’s what we do for a living. But one of the things that they did was, for some things they had to get money. So they actually asked their people. It was a different kind of crowdsourcing. They asked for money for bills to pay for records. The Eastern Oregon University was charging them $75 an hour to review public documents. It wasn’t right, but they were small and they didn’t have a lot of money to fight it. So they asked their—they asked their readers. They asked the public to contribute to a fund so that they could get these documents. And they were able to do these stories. So there are ways to do it. There’s things that you can do to get it around. So that’s one of the people that is wanted. Here, let me show you one other one here. The WLBT 3. They’re a—this is a Jackson Mississippi, a small station—a small market station out in Jackson, Mississippi. They found that these people—they’ve got employees—a classic here—took more than 2,000 hours of vacation time, which he didn’t have. Another one was claiming that he was investigating cases while he was at a casino hotel doing stuff for himself. All of this stuff that they were able to do because they were checking overtime records. These people were claiming overtime when they were actually doing something else. This won them an IRE award in their division, first place. They won the award. Portland. Portland Press Herald. These were—this one was recently identified by Local Matters as one of the best stories in the nation. Very interesting. Right after they had a deadly mass shooting, they raised questions about police training. Basic questions that they were asking. OK, what did these people know? What did they do? Why did we have all these problems? What was the day? What did these people know? Basic questions that they were asking. It all started with FOI information. You know, public access to public records. Where did they find out? Again, basic questions that you ask while you’re doing your regular routine. That’s the basic information that you need to ask. It’s asking the basic questions. Sorry, I could keep going on. (Laughs.) More examples. I’ve got some more. ROBBINS: Yes, I love these. I think they’re great. FUENTES: This is a—Streetsblog is a nonprofit, online-only organization. They are local to New York. And they won for this award—they won an IRE award for their story on black market for temporary license plates. They are—they were working. It was this multipart series. It took them a whole year to do this one. But again, they were had—they were working on other stories at this time. They did have a couple of people that were focused on this. It was their story. They had—as you can see here, they talk about who—Jesse Coburn did most of the story. He had additional reporting help. They always give credit to all the people. And they worked with the New Jersey Monitor, which was a collaboration. I think that’s another big key. These days—you know, in the old days, you may remember, boy, competitiveness. I remember when we had two big papers in San Antonio. Even my small town of Laredo, when I was on the border, we were a town of about 100,000 but we had two daily papers. There were several weeklies. We had the three TV stations. We had three radio stations, all hotly competitive. These days, collaboration actually works very well. And you can rely on each other. You can help each other out. It’s an important way to do things. We can talk about that and the little way—one of the ways to get around something where you need—you need data, right? Data is one of the keys to investigation. But anyway, this was an award-winning story that won an IRE award. Again, it was a matter of being organized, asking the right questions, and just doing it. Don’t give up. Keep going. Keep going. Keep going. Keep going. Follow the money. Follow the money. That’s always the key. So that’s another one. Let’s see one, more that I was going to talk to you about. Let’s see. No, this is—these are sources that I want to—I think those are primarily the ones I wanted to point out to you today on winners. ROBBINS: That’s great. Thank you. So many cities and towns don’t have newspapers, or barely have—barely have newspapers left. FUENTES: News deserts. ROBBINS: What do you consider the most underreported local stories or targets of opportunity these days? FUENTES: School districts. I think in many places the first things that go by the wayside are the school districts, unfortunately. And those people have millions of dollars. You know, even small towns, because of federal funding, most of them have a lot of money. And consulting contracts is a big part of it. The school districts get money for everything from food contracts, to building renovations, repairs, you name it. Money is being spent on school districts. And the question is, who’s getting that money? Who are the—everything from who’s actually doing the work to who are the consultants that are suggesting who does the work? Many times, when you go and start looking into it, oftentimes—do a little cross check between who’s getting the campaign money in the school district races. In most places, those people are still elected. And who’s donating to them and who are doing the consulting is often the same people. But these days, sometimes the big election staff is down to one person, or that person ends up sharing with somebody else. Those people definitely need to be more organized than anyone else, and start looking at agendas more closely, and try to figure that out. I do think that that’s one of the big ones. ROBBINS: So, I mean, that’s great. I’m personally fascinated by the infrastructure money. FUENTES: That’s true too. That’s another big one. The MUD districts, in many places, have—the utility districts. Almost every state has those. Talk about slush funds. They create these little districts that tax—many of them put little taxes that nobody really worries about, because, you know, your property taxes include maybe fourteen cents for this and twenty cents for that. And you’re not thinking. But when you’re talking about thousands of people, it turns out to be a lot of money. And they are spending money. And those—oftentimes, those translate into bad bridges, you know, places where the work doesn’t get done but the money’s being spent, your infrastructure, you’re right, that’s a big chunk. The people that are supposed to be repairing your streets, the potholes, who has that contract? ROBBINS: So I come in and I don’t have an investigative—(background noise). Sorry, that’s my dog about to bark. Lupita, behave. (Laughs.) I come in. I don’t have an investigative team. I don’t have an investigations editor. In the old days, there were fabulous gurus who were investigations editors, like Jeff Leen of the Washington Post, Jim Savage of the Miami Herald. I mean, these are, like, incredible names over time. And one of the biggest questions I have is, you know, where do I find the information? You know, there’s lots of information out there, but, you know, everything’s online. But, you know, states and counties and local, you know, cities, they’re really good at hiding this information. Maybe they require—you know, some states have more sunshine laws. You know, they’re required to do it. Other states have less. I mean, I’m a state employee right now. I work for the—you know, I run a program at the City University of New York. They ask me, I’ve got to—I have to tell them everything about my investments and everything else. When I was at the New York Times I wrote many editorials saying this was a very good idea. Now I’m subject to the editorials that I wrote. But most people wouldn’t know how to find that information. So I don’t have a guru to tell me in the newsroom how to find this information. Who do I ask how to find all of that data that’s somehow hidden on the internet? FUENTES: You know I would—there’s several places that you can actually go these days. And one of the biggest things—and I realize it’s sort of tooting our own horn in a little bit here—but webinars. We have—IRE has a lot of free webinars, for example. And we actually have listservs. Now, some of them—you don’t have to be a member to join the listserv. Members want to help. Journalists want to help each other. You can actually just go to a listserv. One of our listservs—IRE.org. There are parts of it that are open to the public, to any journalist. And you can sign up for a listserv there. And you can ask. Honestly, just flat-out ask, where do I get this information? I see those questions posted all the time. And you will get somebody. And oftentimes, you know, somebody from a small town will get somebody from the New York Times or the Washington Post who will answer, because they want to help. And they will—and somebody—or even from their own state will answer back. I’ve seen somebody from, you know, a small town in Texas gets a question answered from somebody from the Dallas Morning News, or from the Texas—the Freedom of Information Foundation of Texas will answer them, because people want to help. There’s another organization, Big Local News. You can join that one. And they are—let me—let me just point—let me—I was looking at that earlier. Let me share that real quick too, just so people can—maybe show a picture of this one. Let’s see. Am I sharing this? Let’s see. Are you—what am I sharing with you? I’m sharing you. I’m sharing me. Hold on. Let me stop the share. One quick second. Let me look. Big Local News is the one that I would like to share with you. Let’s see. ROBBINS: Yeah, you were on—we just had Big Local News up. FUENTES: OK, sorry. Then let me get back to it. Thank you. OK, yes, there. Big Local News, which is just BigLocalNews.org. They have—they’re based at Stanford University. And maybe you know them, Carla. They gather data tools and they collaborate. And they offer a free archiving service. Cheryl Phillips, who’s active in IRE, has been—has been with us, I think, since close—not an original founder, but close to it. She’s been with us for a very long time. But they offer a lot of help with this sort of thing. And for beginning people, who don’t know where to get information in their local state. They are ready to provide you information of all sorts. And you can join them. And they’re ready also. Local Matters. They have a newsletter, this one. It’s a little awkward. It’s linktr.ee. But they’re also on our site, IRE.org. If you go to our website there’s a place at the top, if you go to resources, where you can go to newsletters, and you can—and it’s free to sign up for Local Matters. Local Matters gives you—every week they produce a list of the best stories from around the nation, where they go and they look at every—all of the front pages, newspapers of the—in the fifty states. And they’ll tell you what are best stories that they’ve got. It’s really—it’s amazing thing that they do. And they’ll produce a lot of interesting stories there that does it. And then, let’s see. Let’s see. Well, anyway, if you go to IRE.org, you get lots of those kind of things. But that’s really—and webinars. Be alert to webinars. Sign up for all those kind of—Poynter. Poynter has good—I also urge people to go to Poynter.org. They also have classes. Now, they charge a little bit for some of theirs. And the—IRE also, you know, going to the conferences, networking—network, network, network. I can’t tell you enough how much networking makes key. Look for the places in your hometown. Texas Tribune in Texas, for example, they offer a lot of things on their website. Salaries. You mentioned you’re a salary—you’re a state employee. They have the salaries of every single state employee. And they update that every year. And so if you wanted to know how much somebody makes—maybe your local college is giving you grief because they don’t want to give you their salary database. Just go to the Texas Tribune’s website. They’re right there. You can get it right now if you want to. And so they might not want to give it to you, but it’s public record. And that’s—you can do that in many places. I believe the St. Louis Post-Dispatch does the same thing in Missouri. Many states, there are people who have local organizations, there are local newspapers, local nonprofit sites that offer the same thing. ProPublica does it for all of the 990s, for nonprofits. That’s something, if you’re interested in what your local nonprofit is doing. Your United Way, for example. You might have heard something going on there. You can check their 990 and see what they’re doing, how they’re collecting money. That kind of information is available through those kind of places. ROBBINS: And 990 is a form that all nonprofits are required to file for nonprofit status. And some are more—file more richly than others, but it’s a requirement— FUENTES: But at the very least, it’ll give you some basic information. It’s supposed to tell you the top five staff members. But at the very least, it’ll tell you the executive director. It’ll tell you who the president is. Not everybody files their IRS 990 like they’re supposed to, but you get some information. And then those—I mean, and, again, I urge you, whatever particular subject you’re studying, look for the webinars. Like at IRE, again, we do free webinars for members. Occasionally, we’ll do a free webinar for everybody, for all journalists. We seek support from foundations to spread it out, to provide fellowships so that we can get more people to become members. So that’s always a possibility. If you need help with memberships, we’ve got possibilities also. That’s also on our website, where you can apply for a membership to get your membership covered. So that’s always available too. But, basically, you need to ask. That’s what you need to do. You need to ask. ROBBINS: So I want to throw it open to the group. I have many more questions, but I’ve got—do have many more questions. Irina is also just giving us a question that she wants answered, but why don’t we let—if you want to raise your hand or put a question in the Q&A, I’m sure that everyone else has questions for Diana. But while you’re formulating that, you want to talk a little bit about your experience covering state house, and tips for—tips for people, like—I think that these days government seems to be much more confrontational with journalists than it used to be. I mean, maybe not necessarily body slamming everywhere, but the verbal form of body slamming. FUENTES: But it’s pretty close, Carla! (Laughter.) It’s pretty close. I think it’s true. They’re always trying to lock us out of committee hearings. And they—even the public. I mean, never mind just us. I mean, you know, we talk about that a lot, that when you look at FOI requests actually journalists make up a very small percentage of who is actually requesting records—public records. It is the public. Attorneys, that’s true, but it’s often just regular people. Parents often are asking out in school districts, they want to know things about their kids, what they’re learning and what they’re—what’s going on with the people who are running for public office, because the reporters are not out there like they used to be. And politics. That’s a very good one, too. I always encourage people to check visitor logs. I think that’s something people don’t often look. Most everybody signs the visitors logs when they go into their state senator, or their state representative. Look and see who is visiting your state rep, who’s visiting that state senator, and see who actually—you’ll get a pretty good look at who is out there. And that may turn out to be a good story. Find out who’s visiting them. That’s public record. Do the usual things, you know, where you ask for the texts, the all of the social media. Look for all of that. That is public record in every state. Things that are paid for by the taxpayer, basically, that’s what’s public record. So ask for the cellphone records of your state senator and their chief of staff. Ask for the chief of staff’s social records. That’s important. Sorry. ROBBINS: So we have a question from Anna Mitchell. But before we go to that I did want to ask you about this sort of increasingly hostile environment that exists. And I think you made a very good point, because that sort of confrontational relationship that exists also exists between the public and politicians. If you go into a school board meeting these days, or if you go into a PTA meeting, or if you go into any of these meetings, you know, this polarization that exists on a national level exists on a local level as well. How, as a reporter, do you ask questions without getting people to go into a total screaming, shrieking defensive crouch? Because you do want to—you want to ask for their records, but you also want them to answer questions, because you—you know, how do you—how do you ask for the records and expect them to ever answer another question after that? FUENTES: I hear you. You know, one of the things that I—especially if it’s your beat, and, you’re right, what you want. I encourage reporters to first make friends with the long-time staff people—the clerks. Start there first. Because you are far better off getting the information first and then asking your questions of the elected official. Many times the keeper of the records has been there a long time. And they are oftentimes very put upon, because they have to put up with bad people, I mean, you know, or people who think they’re God’s gift to the universe. And so you’re in the same boat they are. And if you think of it that way, rather than that they are on the side of the elected official, you are more likely to get help from them. So if you make friends with that person first and get to know them before you need them, go—the whole donut/coffee thing, you know, I think it’s fair to just go visit with those people. Find out who’s got the records in your particular state senator, your state representative, for example, if we’re talking politics. And it works at the local level too. Same thing. City council, county commissioners, your parish, you know, in Louisiana where they have parishes, or whoever is in that particular area. You want to—that’s what you’re looking for, right? That’s what you—that’s what you’re looking for, right? I’m sorry. I think I lost you all. Are you there? ROBBINS: No, we’re here. FUENTES: OK, good. Sorry. There we are. So anyway, if you do that first and you’ve got the basic information I also say, like, I tend to also encourage people to go with the honey approach first. Now, it is a personality thing, I know. I tend to ask a softball question first and let them know that I’ve got the facts. I try not to play gotcha. I let them know that I have the information. So if you got the basic stuff already, so you can say, you know, sir/ma’am, I just got a copy of your credit card records for the last six months. And I see that—so they already know, too late. I’ve got it. So no sense lying to me, because I have it. So if you say it up front like that—I’ve got the last six months records, and it looks like you took your wife with you, and you paid for her dinners and her hotel room the last seven times that you went. And it looks like that’s not allowable. Do you plan to reimburse that anytime soon? You know, something like—giving them an out, maybe? Or something like that. And you are more likely to have an answer than if you say, so, have you been—you know, when did you stop beating your wife, kind of thing, right? ROBBINS: Before or after you paid for her hotel room? (Laughs.) FUENTES: Yes, exactly. I do—I will say that it’s worth it to spend a little time thinking about how you’re going to phrase the questions. Because you’re right, you want them to talk to you. And sometimes, as we know, the first question you ask is just so intense that they may never answer you. They may slam the door on you. And that’s actually going to be your story, that they refuse to comment on this information, because you have it. But I think it’s key to get the information first. And sometimes the way you do that is you go to the people who have it and talk them up first, before you go to the elected officials. There are some people that are always going to be feisty, and they see the whole world as the enemy. And they see us as the enemy many times, no matter who you are. You’re a reporter, they see you as the enemy. So the trick is—you know, we’ve talked a lot about this over time. And I’m sure you’ve seen this, Carla, where people think that Congress is evil, except their congressman. And that’s why they reelect them for forty times, you know? And that’s why they’ve been in office, literally, fifty, sixty years, even though they think Congress is terrible. And if you do a poll, everybody thinks Congress has a horrible reputation, but yet they keep electing the same congresspeople over and over. So the local congresspeople seem to be OK. Maybe because they’re bringing home the pork, but same thing can go for you. You can be friendly with your congressperson, after a fashion. And that’s how you get the information. That’s how you find out the truth. You’re not going to find it by yelling at them. ROBBINS: So Anna Mitchell or Anna Mitchell, would you like to ask your question? Q: So I unmuted. OK. Yeah, I was just—I was gratified when you said it’s all about school boards, because I’m an education reporter and was worried about joining this webinar. But two things. I wanted to throw this out, just that charter schools actually have to file 990s. And we’ve gotten some great information from 990s for charter schools, because things like how much are they paying in consultation fees and management fees. So I just wanted to throw that out there. But I’m really new to this beat. And I was wondering if you had an education reporter association or group that you might recommend. FUENTES: Yes. The Education Writers of America—the Education Writers Association, EWA. You must join them. They are very good. They have a lot of good sessions. They are—they do—we work with them a lot. We actually have co-webinars sometimes. We train at their association, and they train with us. But, yes, do you—have you heard of them? Anna, are you there? Anyway, the EWA. Q: Sorry, I was on mute. Yeah, no, I’ve not heard of them. And I also, you know, there’s so many groups out there that sometimes you don’t know the right one to join. So thank you very much. FUENTES: Right, yes. Yes, no, definitely. They are the ones you want to join. They have a lot of good ideas. Their website is very good. They have some very good databases that can help you. And they know a lot about charter schools. And I’m glad you already did—looks like you already started good—did well with them. But definitely, the 990s are very helpful for charter schools. The other thing to check with them also are property records. One of the things you’ll find many times charter schools, one of the things they do is they own a lot of property. And the people that found them own a lot of property. And they also, because of the way they’re set up, they often do a lot of campaigning. I’m sorry. They donate a lot to election campaigns. So you should cross reference them with the—with your local congresspeople, your state representatives, your state senators, and with your governor, whoever’s running the charter schools. Q: Thank you. ROBBINS: That’s great. Thank you. We have a question from Griffen Smith in the Q&A. Griffen, from the Missoulian. Griffen, do you want to ask your question? Q: Can you hear me? ROBBINS: Absolutely. Q: Yeah. My question’s about, you know, private messaging boards. I am the government reporter over in Missoula, Montana. And recently we’ve been talking about a private signal group chat that some counselors use. And so my question is generally how do you kind of get into that information that, you know, people say might be private, or harder to access with the traditional public records? ROBBINS: And you had written and said the councilors say there are no quorums present with the group chats, and therefore it isn’t a public record. Q: Correct. FUENTES: That’s not true. If they are discussing public business, even if there is no quorum, that is public. The one thing that is an exception is if they’re discussing—and this—it’s a gray area, but it’s more defensible—is if they’re discussing a pending lawsuit. If it’s a matter of a law—but it can’t be a—it cannot be a possible lawsuit. It actually has to be a lawsuit that has been filed, in which case they could discuss that. Like I said, there’s a—if their attorney’s there, for sure, that’s is not public record. If their attorney is not there, they could discuss it, potentially. That might be. It’s a gray area. They could be having a private discussion to talk about negotiating, for example. And that is oftentimes considered not public. If they’re discussing negotiations for a contract, that sometimes is considered not public. But everything else, I mean, that—they’re talking about public business, even if there is no quorum and they are—that should be public. I would go to your—let’s see. I’m sorry. What state are you in? ROBBINS: Montana. Q: Yes. FUENTES: Montana? Let’s see. Let me check real quick. I was going to suggest that you go to your—who’s in the—who’s Montana? Montana has the Montana Freedom of Information hotline. Have you ever worked with them? Q: Not for this issue, but for other things, yes. FUENTES: Yeah. You might ask them. They might be able to get you help with one of their attorneys, just to double check with them on that. Because it sounds to me like they should be giving you that information. You might need help. You might need to get somebody to help you. The NFO—if you do need to go to a lawyer, the NFOIC has grants for that. And the Reporters Committee for—the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, they also have some money to help with some kinds of cases, if you need to go to the attorney for that, if you all can’t afford it. Q: Yeah. Thank you. ROBBINS: Griffen, have you—Griffen, have you written a story about this? What are they hiding? FUENTES: Yeah, yeah. That’s always a classic. Q: Yeah. We’ve written a story, yes. But, you know, not too much about what’s inside that information. ROBBINS: But people aren’t—your readers aren’t pissed off that they’re hiding in this—that they’re doing the people’s business in a secret way? Q: You know, TBD on that. I mean, I’ve definitely heard feedback on it. But it’s not the biggest story in town. FUENTES: I was going to—you know what happens is lots of times unless you can tell people what it’s about, you know, lots of times the public really doesn’t care about our problems. You have to be able to say, look, they’re talking about spending taxpayer money, you know. You have to say what it’s about. There was a good story about where, if you can tell them, for example, the judge is blocking information about the evidence on this serial killer, now you’re talking about people getting concerned. You know, this kind of thing. Or there was this really—a big case having to do with child abuse, and the judge is blocking the evidence and is not letting anybody see it, and when it’s clearly public record. Then you’re getting—you can say it. I can see where, in Griffen’s case, maybe you can’t say what it is because you don’t know what they’re talking about. But I’m glad you wrote about it. Q: Yeah. Thank you. ROBBINS: We have a question from, is it, Laura, is it Guido or Guido? Laura, do you want to ask your question? And can you tell us with whom you work? Q: Hi. Yeah, it’s Laura Guido. I’m with the Idaho Press here in Boise. And one thing that the whole press corps has—or, all the capital correspondence have is we’ve noticed that our state lawmakers search their own emails when they respond to public records requests. They kind of just forward—the records clerk will, like, forward us their forwarded message. And I just wondered if you had tips to, like, ensure we’re getting all the records that we should be getting. FUENTES: So you mean, like, they scan them before they give them to you? Q: Yeah, I mean, what—basically what we get is, like, a PDF of messages that were forwarded to the clerk. And then the clerk sends us the records. But it’s pretty clear that, you know, when we send a request, they’re asking the lawmakers to search their own emails to fulfill the request. FUENTES: Yeah. That one is stickier because I guess what they’re doing is they’re using their personal cellphone for personal business and state business, right? Q: I think it’s all on their state devices, but I’m not sure. FUENTES: The reason I’m asking is because sometimes what they’ll do is if they’re using their personal cellphone for that, and they get—like, for example, they might get a stipend rather than a state-issued phone. If they get a stipend, then they’re using—and they’re using a personal phone, they’re supposed to go through their messages, and that’s what they’re doing. They’re sending what they claim are their state messages, right? And that everything else is their personal, you know, yes, honey, I’m bringing home turkey for dinner. You know, stuff like that. And so they don’t have to send you that, because that’s personal. Now it gets sticky. It’s worth the story at that point to say—because I think that the public would be interested in—because how are the cellphones done? Who owns the cellphone, and how are they—how is it being accounted for? I think that is something that the public would care about. One of the ways that you can tell what they’re accounted—whether you’re getting everything is look at your time stamp and your days. Are there days and times—like, are there blocks missing? Like, if—is this—you said this is state officials? Q: Yeah. FUENTES: So, for example, if it’s a state legislature, right, a legislator, and the legislature is in session. And there’s—you knew that they were in session. And so they’ll give you, like, from—you know, that the session was going on from 2:00 p.m. to 6:00 p.m. And they give you from 2:00 to 230. And then—(off mic)—when they were actually—something was going on. Do you ask for texts as well? Q: Yes. Mostly email, though, is mostly the responsive records that we end up getting. FUENTES: Yeah. I would—I would encourage you to ask for texts as well, right, just to push for that too. Texts and emails. But then if it’s emails, is it their government email, or is it like a Gmail or Yahoo? Q: It’s their government email. FUENTES: Well, if it’s their government email, why are they forwarding it? Everything that’s in there should be public record. Have you—I would—that’s one where I would—Idaho has a good—they have a good one. the Idahoans for Openness in Government. That’s their FOI organization there. I don’t know if you’ve had a chance to work with them. Q: Yes. Yeah, I have. FUENTES: I would—I would ask them about—you know, double check the law, but I think that if it’s their government one even if they’re using—even if they’ve got personal messages, if it’s their government email they give up the right to privacy. They should be giving you every single email, even if it’s personal, because they shouldn’t be using their government for personal use. I think I would argue—you know, I would ask them for it, and press that on a legal point. And see if the Idahoans—the organization there might—you know whether maybe you working with some of the other media in Idaho would work together and, you know, send them a letter. Have a lawyer send them a letter. Not sue right away, but say that you think that everything that they have on their government email is public record. Does that help? Q: Yes, thank you. FUENTES: Yeah, I would push them on that. ROBBINS: Well, while we wait for more questions I wanted to—you had mentioned data and how essential it is. The ability to manipulate data, to crunch data, is obviously an absolutely essential skill set. You know, in the old days there was a dedicated team. There was a data wizard in every newsroom, although these days people have their own wizarding capabilities with data. We all live with data a lot more. Has the technology progressed to the point that we don’t need to have a data wizard, that we can all do it ourselves? Is there particular training that people can point to? Or do we still need to have what we used to refer it was computer—remember computer-assisted reporting? (Laughter.) FUENTES: Yeah. No, you still—I think you’re right that more people know how to do it themselves. We used to have—our data services was a lot more busy than it is now. A lot busier than it is now, because we’ve we basically trained ourselves out of business for a lot of things, because a lot of people can do it. But I will tell you that at our conferences, for example, and we do teach webinars about this too, one of our most popular classes is still basically, you know, a spreadsheets 101. People still want to know how to do Excel or Google Spreadsheet—essentially the same thing, just a different program—but how to—how to do that. How to do pivot tables. You know, how to do—how to read a budget. You know, how to—how to handle numbers. And then a little further, if you go a little more, which is working with SQL, or, you know how to scrape a website with Python coding a little more, which is more intense. But those are things that—those are popular classes for us. We actually do boot camps which we still get people to come, and we do fellowships for those. That training, you can still get it. I think it’s still worthwhile. People do want to learn that. We also—we still offer that. If people want to—if they feel like they’ve got a big project and they don’t—they don’t have the skill set in their newsrooms, we offer what we consider affordable rates to do the work ourselves. We’ve got—we’ve got students who do that kind of work. So they get the experience, and we charge less than somebody with charge. We do—for example, every year out of Illinois we have an organization that asks us to clean up the data on the employee salaries, so—for the city government. It’s an open government thing that they do. And we offer that. And we do it every year. So we can do it. You can pay someone to do that kind of work. But I think more people know how to do Excel. But with Excel, that’s pretty much all you really need. You know how to do a spreadsheet, how to manipulate. These days most organizations—occasionally, you’ll still have, you know, a bulky organization out there, an entity that wants to give it to you as a PDF. But these days, there’s, you know, tools that can turn the PDF into a manageable, searchable database. And then you can use your spreadsheet skills to manipulate the data, so that you can get it to tell you what you need, you know, to figure out whether it’s a worthwhile story. But, yes, I think it’s worthwhile taking those training courses. And you can learn it. It’s not that hard. ROBBINS: We make all of our grad students learn how to work with Excel and do basic data scraping, and to do—and these are all—these are all sort of basic skill sets not just for journalists, but basically for survival these days. And to read a budget. I’m still into— FUENTES: Yeah, how to read a budget. ROBBINS: To be able to read a budget. So Sofia Langlois. Sofia, you want to—you want to voice your question and tell us for whom you work, or with whom you work—depending on how you’re feeling that day? (Laughs.) Sofia, are you— Q: Oh, sorry. Can you hear me all right? ROBBINS: Absolutely. Can you tell us with whom you work and then tell us your question? Q: Absolutely. So I work for the University of Maine student newspaper. ROBBINS: Great. Q: And my question kind of goes back to freedom of access. What would you say is the fastest way to access public records that would contribute to a breaking news story? I found that city council will sometimes take the maximum amount of legally allotted time to share information, but timeliness can be crucial to a story. FUENTES: Yeah. You know, one of the best things you can do is actually advanced planning, before the news breaks, right? Before breaking news. We always encourage people, kind of what I had said earlier, where if it’s your beat, things that you learn about, find out who is the record custodian so you can find out ahead of time who it is that has the information and how they like to ask—how they want to know the question right? Most everybody has either a favorite form—do they want to—will they listen to you by phone? Do they want to have it by email? Do they need something in writing? Find out ahead of time how they want it. And find out who the right person is. Because that can take up time, right, when you want to find the information. If you make friends ahead of time, when the breaking news comes they’re more likely to help you. Whether that’s fair or not, you know, the reality is everybody’s human. And if they know Sofia and they don’t know Diana Fuentes, they’re more likely to give you the information and make me wait. That’s just the way it is. So that’s the first thing I would encourage you, is go out now and find out, even if it has happened to you in the past that you already had to wait for a long time. Go—it’s never too late to make friends. Go find out who the custodian of the records is for all of the different things that you might need, and—police departments, city council, the different agencies, planning and zoning, you know, the plumbing, the commissions for the different departments that you might need. And find out who actually keeps the records, who would need what you might. We always tell people ahead of time for breaking news is the best thing you can do is plan ahead. Stockpile your information ahead of time. Do get three and five years’ worth of information. Salaries. Things that you already know that you might need—salaries, budgets, what is that year’s worth of information, who is in charge of, what, what is the organizational chart? All that kind of information you can get that now and you might need it if there’s breaking news, right? Who’s in charge of—for the police department, for example. Who is in charge of emergency management? Is it the fire marshal? Is there an actual person who’s in charge of emergency management for the whole county? Is there somebody separate from the police, who’s separate from the city, who’s separate from the county? Is the state person in charge? Do they name somebody? You need to know that now before there’s a disaster in your area. That kind of information, do the planning ahead of time. It’s true that when it actually happens there really is no way to force them to give you the information, because that’s the law. You know, the law that is in your state that says that they have—in Texas, for example, they don’t have ten days to provide the information. They have ten days to decide whether they’re going to appeal to the attorney general to argue that they don’t want to give you the information. There is stuff that they are supposed to give you automatically. There’s, for example, what they call the first page of a police report. That has been said over and over and over and over that—and it’s been defended a million times in court—that they have to give you that information. They don’t have ten days. They’re supposed to provide that to you when you ask for it. They’re supposed to be able to show it to you. Some of them take ten days to give you that information. They don’t have it. However, Texas does not have teeth in the law. If they take ten days, there’s nothing—there’s no penalty. We are arguing for that here in Texas, to try to make them a penalty. But right now, if they don’t give it to you in ten days there’s no penalty. So they don’t give it to you, well, they’ll get yelled at, maybe, but that’s about it. So you need to do—go around them. And the way you do that is you make friends and get them to be able to give you the information when you need it. ROBBINS: And this stockpiling of B matter is, like, really, absolutely essential. I mean, just the context stuff is—having previous years of comparative data and all of that, just which is absolutely, when there’s breaking news, is just great. Because then all you’re missing is just the most recent data. And just because it gives you the absolutely essential context. And it also makes it easier to pry information out of people. FUENTES: Basic information that we talk about that you should always have on hand are budgets, salaries, and organizational charts. Who’s in charge? Those are the very basic—very basic things that you need to have. Check registers, credit cards. Sorry, you have somebody else, a question? ROBBINS: Charles Robinson from Maryland Public Television. Charles, you want to ask your question? Q: Sure. Many of you probably already know that we had this bridge that collapsed in Maryland. And one of the things I’m concerned about is, you know, first of all, the contracting of who’s going to build a bridge, where the money’s coming from, and, you know, who will benefit from this? Don’t get me wrong. You know, every lobbyist in the state of Maryland has, you know, got their finger on a piece of this action. And, you know, look the governor is very popular in the state. A, d of course, he has delegated it to, you know, the transportation secretary, whose track record is not very good. In fact, they had to slash the budget, and they’re continuing to slash the budget because they’re not going to get any revenue from, you know, tolls that are going back and forth. I don’t know if you can point me in some—you know, into—from the both the local level and federal level, you know, what should I be looking at? FUENTES: One of the first things I would do is, the people that they’re considering is I would, again, cross check with campaign records. Look at the—because even though the governor has transferred the authority to the transportation chief, I would still cross check all the people who you hear their names are being considered. Cross check it against the governor’s last four—his last couple of elections. Look at the campaign finance record and see if any of them have donated. And go beyond just—you know the look up those companies and see who the presidents are and who the officers are. For that kind of information, you’ll need to go to—usually the secretary of state will have business records. Sometimes you’ll need to go to the city of wherever their headquarters are. You can sometimes find it—sometimes things like building permits. If they build an office, they’ll need a building permit. And that often will give you information that you might not get at the secretary of state level. But you’ll need to find out who is connected to that company and see if any of those names pop up as giving money to the governor. I think that’s one of the things you want to look at because that’s how you’re going to find out if there’s any skullduggery going on. That’s one of the chief things that I would be looking at. Q: We get lobbying records. We get lobbying records. So, you know, I can look at, you know, who is, as I like to say, trying to grease the wheel. FUENTES: Lobbying is good too. But that’s separate from campaign finance, because oftentimes it’s not the lobbying. The lobbying is being done behind the scenes. Somebody is donating money straight directly to it. So you may not know that, you know, Charles Whitaker who owns this company has been quietly giving the governor money for the last twenty years. And he may not be paying for a lobbyist, but he didn’t have to, right? Because he’s been giving the governor, you know, thousands of dollars for his campaigns. And it might not just be for being for governor. Maybe—I don’t know what the governor did before—but if he ran for Congress, or if he ran for—if he was in the state senate, or if he was a lieutenant governor. I would look at those kind of—start with the most recent race, of course. But that’s one thing. The other thing you might look at, on a separate kind of issue, is what is the OSHA record for all of these companies? If they had any kind of injuries or deaths associated with these companies. Those have to be filed. Reveal has a really good database on OSHA records that’s easier to search than just the OSH. OSH is the Occupational Safety and Hazard Administration. And all record—all work-related injuries and deaths have to go with them. So they’re required—all companies, big companies, are required to file with them. So I would check those records too, so you can find out how safe are these companies. Q: All right. Thank you. ROBBINS: That was great. Diana, we’ve run out of time. I’m sure we have many more questions. I just want to thank you for taking so much time. And I’m going to turn it back to Irina. And thank everybody for great questions. FUENTES: I did want to say one quick thing. If you all have questions, and if I can help with anything, my email is really easy. Just [email protected]. Just regular D-I-A-N-A at IRE.org. And I’m happy to help anybody. ROBBINS: That’s great. Thank you. FASKIANOS: Fantastic. Thank you, Diana Fuentes and Carla Robbins, for this terrific conversation, and to all of you for joining from across the country. We will send out a link to the webinar recording and transcript soon. We’ll also include Diana’s email address so you can contact her directly. And you can follow our speakers on X at @DDFOnline and at @RobbinsCarla. And, as always, we encourage you to go to CFR.org, ForeignAffairs.com, and ThinkGlobalHealth.org for the latest developments and analysis on international trends and how they are affecting the United States. We also have launched a hub for election 2024 on the CFR.org site where we are tracking issues that connect with foreign policy and local. So I commend that to you for additional information and analysis on the election as we gear up for November. And, as always, you can suggest topics for future webinars by emailing us, [email protected]. So, again, thank you all for being with us today. And we look forward to continuing the conversation. FUENTES: Thank you, Carla. Thanks, Irina. ROBBINS: Thanks, Diana. Thanks, Irinia. FASKIANOS: Thank you. FUENTES: Bye. (END)