[CW:MONTHLY] Plenty of Time for Sunshine

We've just changed the clocks to give us more sunshine in our days. Now it's time to move our coverage ahead for more sunshine in government. Sunshine Week 2008 got underway on Sunday, March 16, and there are still plenty of opportunities to participate, either with original work or by utilizing the myriad of resources in our online toolkit.

The focus this year is the Sunshine Campaign, a yearlong effort to drive access to government meetings and information (or the lack thereof) as a campaign issue at all levels of government. To help focus your efforts, there are several Sunshine Campaign-specific resources on our Web site, including sample questions for candidates; an overview of where the leading three presidential candidates stand on openness; print, Web and broadcast public service ads featuring actors and Sunshine Campaign imagery; and links to other resources.

In addition to the campaign, there is also the usual collection of opinion columns, editorial cartoons, graphics and links to other work.

Some news outlets are asking their readers to suggest the questions on open government they'd like answered, while others are focusing on how access to this information has affected the community - either through their news reporting or led by citizens' action. There are also forums, information audits and other coordinated plans in the works.

The Sunshine Week Web site will showcase a variety of Sunshine Week work from around the country. Please consider sending yours via e-mail to Sunshine Week coordinator Debra Gersh Hernandez at dghernandez@asne.org.

[CW:MONTHLY] Access is a Right, Not a Special Privilege

With apologies to the late Tip O'Neill, it serves us well to remember that all news is local. This is particularly true when it comes to reporting on open government issues and the impact these stories have on your community.

Although it's important to cover these issues whenever they occur, Sunshine Week, marked this year for March 16-22, is a particularly good time to remind readers, viewers and listeners of how access to information has led to positive change.

The school board, city council, zoning commission, health department, public works, police and fire — these are all places to look not just for breaking news, but also to start to track patterns in the release of information. There also are great human interest stories in the people who are fighting for access to records and meetings.

And in an election year, looking at where candidates and the government offices they run — or hope to run — stand on open government is crucial not only to developing a portrait of the candidate, but also to understanding what could happen to information in the term ahead.

Some examples of how newspapers highlighted FOI news from previous Sunshine Week packages include:

The Connecticut Post in Bridgeport found that federal court clerks were routinely refusing to release the names of sitting jurors, despite the fact that the individuals had stated their names and other personal information in open court during jury selection. This news came as a surprise to some of the judges. An opinion column by the Post's editor called such secrecy "a wholesale miscarriage of American justice."

"Personally," wrote Kansas City Star Editorial Page Editor Miriam Pepper referring to stories the paper broke using government records, "I want to know if my tax dollars are wasted on the wrong cell phone plans, if government holds property it can't even categorize and doesn't need, that a firefighter died after lax equipment repairs, or that my parent might be at risk in a nursing home with a bad record of care."

One of the most ambitious — certainly one of the most visible — demonstrations of how important open government is to newsgathering has been undertaken by The Oklahoman in Oklahoma City. Each Sunshine Week, the paper runs the Sunshine Week icon next to every item, from briefs to features, which came from public access to government information. In 2006, it estimated that the icon appeared next to roughly 7 in 10 stories during Sunshine Week.

It's important to remember, however, that access to government meetings and information is not a special privilege of the news media, but a right of the public. Educating people about what kind of information is available and how to get it is another way to engage them in your content, and provides particularly creative opportunities for your Web site with links, interactive request generators, story archives and more.

For more examples, see the Bright Ideas books and online gallery on the Sunshine Week Web site, http://www.sunshineweek.org/. You'll also find an online Tool Kit with materials to help you engage in Sunshine Week 2008 and the Sunshine Campaign through the elections.

[CW:MONTHLY] Sunshine Online

The Sunshine Campaign's focus on bringing open government to the 2008 elections - from president to city council - provides great opportunities for online creativity, particularly if you're planning special online packages and pages for Sunshine Week, March 16-22. In addition to showcasing the collection of work your organization does this year, there are opportunities to re-post or link to past stories, either from earlier Sunshine Weeks or that were developed using open government resources. You also can create great graphics and interactive tools, such as FOIA letter generators, step-by-step guides to how to get information and even searchable databases.

The Sunshine Week site, www.sunshineweek.org, will host a number of online resources in its Tool Kit. There are things you can use this year, as well as links to some of the great work that was done in previous years to inspire you.

Among the online resources that will be launched in the next several weeks: an online database of news articles about where the major party candidates stand on open government, including the responses of those who replied to our survey on the issue; Web ads in English and Spanish; and other materials such as logos and opinion columns. All Sunshine Week materials posted on our Web site can be used free of charge by any participant, unless otherwise noted.

Sunshine Week and the Sunshine Campaign also have created pages in Facebook. You can show your support by joining the cause and/or becoming a fan. The main page is at http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=9019387811.

Let us know what you're doing so we can show others, and also consider whether your work (such as graphics or a video) might be something participants nationwide could use as well. All work is fully credited to its creators. And of course, please share your ideas with Sunshine Week the team by contacting coordinator Debra Gersh Hernandez at dghernandez@asne.org.

[CW:MONTHLY] Sunshine on the Trail: Bringing Open Government to the Campaign

So many issues; so few opportunities to ask candidates where they stand. Yet in the upcoming elections - from the presidential race to local campaigns - there are few issues more important to ask incumbent and aspiring office holders about than open government.

Access to official documents and meetings affects our understanding of every other issue. Are we getting the full story on global warming? Who paid for the governor's "fact-finding" trip to Aruba? How fairly are funds being allocated to schools across the city? It all comes around to the public - and by extension, journalists - having access to information about what government is doing, and, most importantly, why.

Making open government a must-address campaign issue at all levels is the focus of the Sunshine Campaign, a special project of Sunshine Week, the open government initiative led by the American Society of Newspaper Editors and conducted with NLGJA and other groups. Journalists across the country are being urged to ask every candidate for public office key questions about open government. Responses will be culled into online databases, open to everyone. It's easy to get started: just begin asking the questions.

At the national level, there are some suggested starter questions online at www.sunshineweek.org/sunshineweek/toolkits. More categories of questions will be added in the coming weeks. For help in identifying state and local issues, look up your state SPJ Sunshine chair online at www.spj.org/sunshine-chairs.asp. And check with your state's FOI coalition (find it at www.nfoic.org/resources/states) and press association.

The answers you find can be used in news stories, opinion pieces, editorials, blogs, and as stand-alone pieces or parts of other features. Please be sure, however, to share with us what you find, so we can add it to the national online database. You can e-mail links or electronic files to Sunshine Week Coordinator Debra Gersh Hernandez at dghernandez@asne.org. Similarly, if you have any questions or have suggestions for the project, please let her know.

The upcoming elections provide a unique opportunity to rip a hole in the wall of unnecessary secrecy that's been building around government. The Sunshine Campaign is not about advocacy, it's about democracy.