What politicians know thanks to the Freedom of Information Act
The Freedom of Information Act turned 10 on January 1 (yes, I am a bit late, but I have been in West Wales) and political parties have been celebrating by…
With FOI think MVP
Being quite busy recently, I’ve been thinking about ways to use Freedom of Information Act requests to generate stories without taking up huge amounts of time (mine, and FOI officers)…
FOI and Datasets
Request Initiative, not-for-profit community interest company that helps charities, NGOs non-profits make use of FOI, is blogging top tips for using the FOI act. This week’s topic, looking at asking for…
Behind the scenes on an award winning story
So this time last week, I was getting ready to catch a very early flight to Paris ahead of the Data Journalism Awards. My story looking at where social services in Wales…
A Great Big List of FOI Ideas
Is one of your journalism resolutions this year to put in more Freedom of Information requests but not really sure where to start? David Higgerson’s blog has a FOI Friday feature, collecting…
FOI is better than tea and biscuits!
The Cardiffian, Cardiff School of Journalism’s hyperlocal website, published a story earlier about Freedom of Information requests to Cardiff Council – nearly 4,000 in the past three years (most of those…
Using FOI as a journalist
I make a lot of FOI requests (I counted about 80 in a year), and yes, some of them are just fishing expeditions to get stories (look, it has to…