There’s a familiar dance any time a newspaper makes a records request to local government. Step 1: Said governmental body says records will cost an exorbitant amount. Step 2: Newspaper counters with the public’s right to know. Step 3: Governmental body slightly lowers the cost of the records request. Step 4: Repeat until parties reach a terse agreement, abandon the story, or go to court.
This is business as usual for newspapers; most newsrooms have a budget specifically for records requests, but that doesn’t mean reporters don’t want to cut the best deal possible, for reasons both journalistic (the public needs to know) and financial (the paper’s budget is shrinking).
Mentioned later in the article is 2010-2011 Reynolds Fellow David Cohn:
This is the second time the paper has used Spot.us to fund a records request, the first coming last December when they requested data for a story about liquor violations on the University of Missouri campus. They similarly raised the money overnight — $100 in that case — to ply the records away from the university. The stars seemed to align for the project: At the time Spot.us founder David Cohn was studying at the Reynolds Journalism Institute.
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