Friday, November 30, 2007

In my JRNL 328 News Reporting class, we've been discussing the difficulty surrounding accessing public documents. I was told that accessing police logs were among the hardest documents to obtain, which piqued my interest. For another story, in order to "localize" the soon-to-be amended statewide Right to Know Law, I contacted the campus police with a request for their 24-hour logs. I was told to make a formal inquiry in person, but was not interrogated or treated suspiciously. I had fewer problems than the Indiana Gazette reporters who covered the Right to Know Law in 2005 and did the same thing -- perhaps because they'd set a precedent and knew how to deal with document requests.

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