Public Record Resources

Just hearing "public records" makes me cringe. It takes me back to the days of media law, the days of learning about FOIA and "The Sunshine Act" and all those things that I just generally want to push out of my mind forever. I often get "public records" confused with "open/closed meetings;" while related, I remember more from the open/closed meetings portion of media law. I'm not sure what this blog is supposed to be about, but I assume we're supposed to read and talk about things we learned. I read all the links I could (only the first and third ones worked for me), and I didn't necessarily learn anything. Some things were refreshers; as previously stated, I put most of my media law knowledge in the far back of my mind and hope to dump it out at any moment. So, my blog is just about questions that these readings raised in my mind.

Here's the big question: How do you know who to contact to get a public record? Personally, I just imagine this building somewhere in downtown Raleigh (I'm totally unfamiliar with Raleigh, so for all I know I'm imagining Narnia) with a stuffy old lady sitting at the front desks and millions of dusty records that date back to the beginning of time on an infinite amount of shelves behind her. Now I know it doesn't work like that; I took reporting, and while I tried to stay away from public records, I did end up having to get a few records from the Board of Education. However, that was pretty simple because the board chair just e-mailed them to me. She was really friendly, and I didn't have to deal with a stuffy old lady behind a desk.


If someone tries to make you go through a public information officer, how do you avoid that? I've been in the situation before where someone just would not talk to me. Every time I attempted to contact him, he just simply said, "Talk to our PIO." And that was the end of our conversations. This isn't the best wording, but how can I force someone into doing what I want?

If someone just refuses to comply, what do I do? I read about the part about using G.S. 132, and while I'm sure that will impress people, I feel like under pressure I may forget it. And even if I don't, there's no guarantee that the argument will work.
What do we do when records are out-of-date? When I covered the Orange County school system in reporting, I wanted the minutes of the Board of Education meetings. But they didn't get those online until over a month after the meeting - at which point it would no longer be news. I was lucky enough to be in contact with a chair who tried to help me, but I know that won't always be the case.

I actually wanted some of the other links to work; these two started to raise some good questions, and I felt like I had more coming on before my search was put to a stop.  But honestly, I think most of my questions will come once I start searching. It's hard to understand the situation until you're actually in it, so it's hard for me to predict what will potentially be a problem. Right now all this stuff about spreadsheets is overwhelming me, so I can't imagine that the search for public records will be any worse.