MuckRock has partnered with the USA TODAY Network New York, the Brechner Center for Freedom of Information and Syracuse University journalism students to file more than 600 records requests with more than 400 police agencies in hopes of creating a searchable, first-of-its-kind database with disciplinary records from across the state.

It’s that time again — we’re now accepting nominations for the Foilies, the annual “anti-awards” program for government agencies that make access to information harder than it needs to be, often in equal parts maddeningly and inadvertently hilarious ways.

Though there are still many open questions about the effect of 50-a’s repeal on problematic police officer transparency, it’s a development that highlights the value access can have for the integrity of the criminal justice system.

We’ve broken down some highlights of the legal presidential transition process and where you can look for your next bit of #FOInspiration.

For the federal government, grants can be a good way to impact state and municipal policies, purchases, and priorities and for the public, great ways to learn more about how federal financial influence is playing out.

At DocumentCloud, we’ve always recognized a document is so much more than just its contents. We’re pleased to announce the DocumentCloud Beta has been recently updated with the ability to edit a given document’s title, source, description, related article URL, and published URL.

DocumentCloud has historically offered its users the ability to upload documents in many different file formats. The latest upgrades to the DocumentCloud Beta bring this functionality to our new platform, allowing users to upload nearly any document file with ease.

Cops of questionable character are not just threats to the civilians they police. They could undermine court proceedings against the very criminals they are meant to capture.

Despite lacking legal authority to do so, localities and agencies around the United States are still pointing to the COVID-19 pandemic as a reason for delaying responses to public records requests, sometimes indefinitely.

In this week’s FOIA Roundup, we feature a new book about America’s disposal of nerve agents in the Pacific Ocean and take a look at the limits of Trump’s tweets to affect declassification. Let us know if you see something we’ve missed!

Complaints against Buffalo police officers and firefighters — regardless of whether they are unsubstantiated, pending, or involved in a confidential settlement — will remain subject to public disclosure, a New York judge ruled Tuesday.

Misinformation and disinformation originating from law enforcement sources, which has lately included Antifa raids, brick piles, poisoned milkshakes and more, has sparked considerable interest in the past few months. But journalists who cover the police say this is common — even the rule. Here’s what you need to know and how public records can help.

In this week’s FOIA Roundup, we feature an investigation from Science on oversight of clinical trials, a questionable court decision on Twitter direct messages, and the recent decision to overturn Department of Justice exemptions throughout the Mueller report.

We’re three-quarters through migrating newsrooms over to the upgraded DocumentCloud platform, so we wanted to take some time to walk through what we’ve learned so far and what newsrooms need to know for a smooth transition. The video of our discussion last week — including Q&A time where we answered burning questions — is below. We also upgraded MuckRock’s servers to offer a faster, more responsive experience.

In this week’s roundup, we feature new details on the pesticide industry’s push to influence international policy, this year’s Golden Padlock winner, and gestures toward transparency across the country.

DocumentCloud has long offered a number of options when it comes to making documents easier to search, including support for OCR, which “reads” through text that’s saved as images to make it searchable. With the latest upgrades to the DocumentCloud Beta, we’re expanding support from 22 languages to 103, so whether you’re analyzing a document in Afrikaans or Yiddish, or anything in between, we’ve got you covered.

Building on COVID Public Info, we’re excited to announce that we’re combining efforts with Documenting COVID-19. The project, based out of Columbia University’s Brown Institute for Media Innovation, is similarly working to use public records to build a shared repository to benefit newsrooms around the country.

In this week’s roundup, we highlight the latest finds from federal FOIA releases and the Postal Service, plus a new FOI law and frustration with denials in New York

No user-facing feature updates this week, but we updated the API instructions and have a new sample script that helps export request data any way you need it.

We released the first in our MIT Press series, “Writers Under Surveillance,” two years ago today.

Decades of the President’s Intelligence Checklist and Presidential Daily Briefings are publicly available. Help us read through them.

In this week’s roundup, we highlight the latest from MuckRock, federal FOIA lawsuits, and the plight of Illinois’s child wards.

Science writer Kris Newby shares her personal journey that took her from the beaches of Martha’s Vineyard into the depths of the U.S. government’s Cold War biological weapons program.

In late August, we pushed out a major upgrade bringing MuckRock from Django 1.11 to Django 2.1 and from Python 2 to 3. While these updates didn’t offer much new functionality, they were important to help us continue keeping MuckRock secure and giving us an updated, modern platform to build on.

How did massive amounts of government money end up in the pockets of corporations and rich Americans during Trump’s presidency? We go inside the system to find out in ‘The Heist,’ a new Center for Public Integrity podcast. To celebrate, we’re partnering on a contest to help bring even more transparency to one of the biggest tax breaks for the wealthy in history.