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Sun Never Sets on Sunshine Week

Nick | 22 March, 2008 19:47 | (138)

On Saturday, The Telegraph’s observation of Sunshine Week officially came to a close. I say "officially" for two reasons:

One, this year’s theme of journalists and citizens urging all candidates for public office to state their positions on open government is, by definition, a yearlong activity.

Two, here at The Telegraph we consider open government and the public’s right to know to be a 365-day-a-year commitment.

Now that the calendar observance is over, though, I thought it would be worth summarizing our contributions to Sunshine Week these past six days.

As I mentioned in my column last Sunday, this year represented our most aggressive presentation of staff-generated material on our news pages since we began participating in 2005, thanks in large part to the coordinating efforts of City Editor Jonathan Van Fleet.

On the opinion pages, we replaced our daily syndicated columnists with op-ed pieces by public officials and open-government advocates, supplemented by a collection of sunshine-related cartoons. We also published eight Sunshine Week personal essays from members of our Reader Advisory Network spread out over the week.

So here’s a breakdown of our contributions, all of which are still available on our special Sunshine Week Web page.

Sunday: The results of a public document audit – sort of like an Easter egg hunt – in which we sent reporter intern Paul Landau to eight school administration offices in search of copies of teacher and superintendent contracts. The results: 8-0 on teacher contracts; 0-8 on superintendent contracts. (As of Friday, however, we had received all eight of the latter.) We also published a legislative update by the Associated Press on possible changes to the state’s Right-to-Know Law, my opening column, an editorial and the first three Sunshine Week essays.

Monday: A national Associated Press article depicting how other states in the country are handling public access to e-mail and text messages in state government; and an op-ed piece by U.S. Sens. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., and John Cornyn, R-Texas, on their efforts to bring more transparency to the federal government.

Tuesday: An overview piece by staff reporter Albert McKeon on what type of information is available to the public under the state constitution and the Right-to-Know Law; the first of four topical stories, this one by reporter David Brooks on what’s available in municipal government; an editorial about our Sunday audit; and an op-ed piece by U.S. Reps. Rick Boucher, D-Va., and Mike Pence, R-Ind., about the need for Congress to pass a shield law to protect reporters from revealing confidential sources.

Wednesday: A story by education reporter Michael Brindley about our yet unsuccessful attempts to get access to the latest evaluations – with names redacted – for the city’s 950 teachers; an article by court reporter Andrew Wolfe on what’s available and how to obtain public records in the court system; and an op-ed piece by Republican Florida Gov. Charlie Crist about his efforts to improve government transparency in the (pun intended) Sunshine State.

Thursday: A report and chart by City Hall reporter Patrick Meighan on the 33 active and former city employees who earned more than $100,000 in 2007; a story by business reporter Ashley Smith on what public records are available to help the consumer make good decisions; and an op-ed piece by Robert Freeman, executive director of the New York State Committee on Open Government, about the myths of government secrecy.

Friday: A profile by McKeon of a Fitzwilliam man who has spent four years fighting the state over the release of public documents; an article by Statehouse reporter Kevin Landrigan on how to keep track of what your legislators are up to in Concord; and an op-ed piece by Adam Goldstein, an attorney advocate for the Student Press Law Center in Virginia, on a federal law that requires colleges and universities to make public campus crime data.

Saturday: The follow-up story to our Sunday audit, where school officials acknowledged they were caught off guard by our visits and promised to have documents of that type more readily available to the public in the future; an interview about right-to-know issues with Telegraph attorney Rick Gagliuso; and an op-ed piece by U.S. Sen. Mary L. Landrieu, D-La., about how the federal Freedom of Information Act was instrumental in uncovering government incompetence in the wake of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita.

So there you have it. Six days of not only trying to convince you about the importance of open government in our daily lives, but also of providing you with some tools to help you become a better citizen.

Public service journalism doesn’t get any better than that.

Nick Pappas is editorial page editor at The Telegraph and New Hampshire coordinator of Sunshine Week. He can be reached at 594-6505 or npappas@nashuatelegraph.com.

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