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Thursday, January 12, 2012
Ind. Law - IndyStar looks at improving "StarWatch" webpage
StarWatch is the name for the IndyStar's investigative team and its website. The site attempts to provide links to back stories on, for example, the toxicology investigation, but looks to be incomplete on that topic. In addition, I see nothing at all about about the Duke series. And the list of investigators appears incomplete.
Today, Alex G. Campbell, who is I believe the newest member of the team, had a series of tweets, including:
- Good people of Central Indiana: What would you like to see on a "StarWatch" webpage?
- As in, what more would you like from The Star's investigative reporters beyond the stories that appear in print every now and again?
- We're well aware that the current Star Watch page is, erm, shall we say lacking in a number of areas.
- And we have a wee mandate to make it no longer quite so terrible. In fact, maybe we can even make it a good, worthy page.
- Point 1 is to be user-friendly. As in, make it much easier to access work that we've been doing, and in particular, ongoing work.
- So if Tim Evans comes out with yet another Toxicology story, finding previous Toxicology stories won't be an investigation in and of itself.
- Another major point is to make our investigations more collaborative, and make readers feel like they're co-investigating.
- So we're kicking around some ideas. One is to have a part of the page be devoted to Freedom of Information Act requests we've sent out.
- It would have who we sent the to, for what, and how long it's taking for the agency to respond.
- We couldn't do that for all our FOIA requests, for competitive reasons, but we're thinking there's a line we can walk.
Which reminds me of some news out of Chicago some time back. The Chicago Sun-Times reported May 13, 2010:
In the name of “transparency,” Mayor Daley on Thursday got some measure of revenge against the investigative reporters who’ve made his life miserable by digging up dirt on the Hired Truck, city hiring and minority contracting scandals.See more on that in this May 23, 2010 ILB entry.He revamped the city’s new website to include a log of all Freedom of Information Act requests. The list includes the name and organization of each applicant, documents demanded and dates the information was requested and is due to be released.
A new state law merely requires city departments to maintain such a log — not to post it on the Internet to tip investigative reporters about the trail being followed by competitors.
But Daley gleefully declared that he was going “above and beyond what’s required” in the interest of “transparency, openness and the free-flow of information.”
“If you want transparency in government, you have to have this. I’m sorry. This has nothing to do with [getting even with] the Sun-Times, Tribune, media or anything. This is what you want,” Daley said.
Corporation Counsel Mara Georges noted that some investigative reporters try to keep tabs on competitors by “FOI-ing other peoples’ FOIs.”
Also see this Dec. 5, 2010 ILB entry that quoted an item from the Star itself:
Wall Street Journal reporter Rebecca Smith has earned the fear and respect of energy executives.In 2001, she and WSJ reporter John Emshwiller broke story after story about the unsavory financial dealings at Enron that helped lead to the Houston company's collapse. The two later described their efforts in a booked titled "24 Days."
So what is Smith digging into lately?
You guessed it. She's looking into Duke Energy's Indiana operations and the scandal involving Scott Storms, former general counsel at the Indiana Utility Regulatory Commission, who has become embroiled in an ethics scandal and was later fired by Duke.
Smith has filed an open-records request with the IURC. "I'd like to get the copies of the e-mails cited in the Indianapolis Star and also chat with you about this hiring controversy," she wrote the IURC on Oct. 12.
Posted by Marcia Oddi on January 12, 2012 04:16 PM
Posted to Indiana Law