A FOIA Field Guide

When Filing Records Requests, Be Targeted and Organized. The New York Times’ Washington bureau FOIA coordinator offers an in-depth field guide for reporters on how to navigate federal and state public records requests.
by Gabriel Pietrorazio, National Press Foundation
“Be clear, be specific, be human.” Before you consider filing a FOIA, ask yourself: What are you looking for? Being able to confidently answer that question is crucial to receiving a timely response from records custodians. Contrary to popular opinion, most records requests for federal agencies aren’t even made by journalists. “They’re not made by reporters looking for information or trying to do stories. They’re made by businesses. They’re made by law firms. They’re made by nonprofits,” said Mark Walker, the FOIA coordinator for The New York Times’ Washington bureau and president of Investigative Reporters and Editors. And with journalists only representing a small fraction of all requests, newsrooms “end up sort of suffering and waiting” through a “grueling process,” filled with backlogged records requests that are often delayed, denied or dismissed.
Send PDFs but don’t receive them. Journalists should be picky about formatting when it comes to sending official requests to records custodians. Only send them as a PDF, so the recipient won’t be tempted to tinker with the wording in a Word document. But ask recordkeepers to never return documents as a PDF. Walker said he wants a record to be sent in the way it’s maintained at the agency. “My golden rule is never accept PDFs,” Walker said. “You end up spending a lot of your personal or reporting time, un-PDFing something.”
Retrieve the records retention schedule. Think of it as “a menu,” Walker said. Records retention schedules essentially document every piece of information an agency tracks. “One of the issues with FOIA and any public records is that an agency has no obligation to make a record for you, which is also why the schedule is really important,” he said. Knowing with certainty what information agencies manage is crucial to a successful public records request.
Always aim for the “simple bucket.” FOIA is “a broken system,” Walker said, but learning how to navigate it can determine the outcome of any request. There are three buckets - or queues - reporters will mostly work within: simple, complex and expedited. The most recent statistics show it takes an average of 104 days for a simple request to be resolved whereas complex requests take an average of 600 days. “Waiting two years for direct requests and documents to come back is really tough,” Walker said.
Speak to internal sources. Don’t be afraid to contact agencies to strategize about your FOIA requests. Sources inside an agency can save journalists time when trying to figure out whether information is accessible or not. Walker said that he’s had sources who’ve actually helped craft language for a number of requests. He believes that developing a relationship with them can go a long way when it comes to gathering institutional insights. “I use my sources not just for reporting but also helping collect information and making sure my FOIA is as direct and straight to the point and asking for the exact piece of information as possible,” Walker said.
Speaker: Mark Walker, FOIA Coordinator, Washington Bureau, The New York Times; President, Investigative Reporters and Editors
This program was funded by the Evelyn Y. Davis Foundation. NPF is solely responsible for the content.
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