The 40th birthday of the federal Freedom of Information Act slipped past me this week. The law went into effect on July 4, 1967. Here’s one good column tracing its history, from the News & Observer. Meanwhile, Editor & Publisher reports on a study of old FOIA requests which found at least one dating back twenty years that is still pending. As part of your FOIA birthday bash, spend a few minutes browsing at The National Security Archive, which has links to a lot of fascinating stuff, including that study of old FOIA requests.
Just an afterthought on the media conflicts exposed by the Extreme Makeover situation…KITV has quite a collection of Extreme stories and video available online, but the only mention of the inconvenient disclosure that the family could have well afforded to have their own house fixed appears in the reader comments.
Here’s quite an interesting take on reporting of the iPhone’s introduction and how it points to the future of news: “The event was covered live, in video, directly to the internet and to the public, by the people in the story, without news organizations.” Read the extended comments from the BuzzMachine blog.
And thanks to Jeff Garland for noting this Newsweek story on broadband access, which reports that the U.S. isn’t near the top of the list.
“It’s not just a matter of national pride,” says Ben Scott, the policy director of Free Press, a consumer-oriented D.C. think tank. “A country that’s fully connected has access to tools that let citizens do jobs that we can’t do. The cost of falling behind can be hundreds of billions of dollars every year.”
Gannett has taken another step to boost its bottom line again, this time abruptly eliminating free parking provided to staffers at its Burlington Free Press, according to a Seven Days, Vermont’s alternative web weekly.
And so it goes.
How much could parking cost in Vermont? LOL