For years, this newspaper has done the work the right way. We have filled out the forms, paid the copy fees, asked our questions clearly and given every office in this county the time and the good faith to do its job providing public records. But we owe you some honesty about the modern era of this paper: as the resources of local journalism have thinned, here and everywhere, we have not always been able to push back when our records requests were denied or delayed.
Fighting a government takes time and money, and for a long stretch we had precious little of either. When the answer was a locked drawer and a form letter, too often the practical answer on our end was a sigh and the next deadline. Not because we didn’t care. Because we couldn’t afford the fight.
That era is over. Today we are announcing a new one, and we’re announcing it with real optimism. This newspaper is committing its resources, still limited, still honestly accounted, to defending the public’s right to know, wherever that defense needs to happen, up to and including a courtroom.
We are a few desks and a few bylines in a big county, and we have decided that if a small paper must choose where to spend what little it has, there is no better purchase in journalism than the truth, at cost, on behalf of the people who own it. That’s not a burden. That’s the job, and we’re lucky to have it.
Because here’s the wonderful, radical, thoroughly American idea underneath all of this: the records are ours. They were written by public employees, on public time, with public money, about the public’s business. Democracy is a beautiful word for a simple arrangement; you lend power to your neighbors and in exchange they account for it. Elections are how the lending happens; records are how the accounting happens. When both halves work, ordinary people get to see exactly what was done in their name and government earns the trust it deserves. We’ve seen that work in this county and we believe it can work every time.
So here is what you can expect from us in this new era. When a records request is granted, we’ll say thank you and get to reporting. When one is denied, we will inform the public body of the law and if they continue to pushback, we will quickly escalate it to a court room. If I must, I will personally litigate the governments of this county into being the shining example of records compliance.
The First Amendment was written for whoever is standing closest when power needs to explain itself, and around here, for better or for worse, that’s us — your neighbors, with a notepad and an earned stubborn streak. These are your records, this is your county, and we could not be prouder to go get the truth on your behalf. I am very excited for the stories we will tell in this new era of The Tribune.
