Sunlight Foundation

Washington, DC - This morning, the Sunlight Foundation launched a new resource for journalists, bloggers and citizens, the Reporting Group Web site, available at Reporting.SunlightFoundation.com. The site will integrate Sunlight’s many efforts on behalf of journalists including training materials, research, data and stories—into a single site.

“By bringing all of our resources under one roof, we are making it easier for journalists to get a fuller picture of how government data-driven stories can have impact,” Reporting Group Editorial Director Bill Allison said. “Journalists will be able to come to the Reporting Group site, get information on timely data sets, access tools to analyze those data sets and find training resources that will help them get the most out of government data.”

The Reporting Group’s goals are to identify and describe little-known and underused federal data sets, to assess the accuracy, completeness and usefulness of that data and to demonstrate through investigative reporting how this data can be used effectively. Through in-person and webinar training classes, the Reporting Group also helps other journalists and bloggers to do the same, with an emphasis on how to use Sunlight-built and Sunlight-supported resources to highlight how federal data affects their local communities.

With the site’s launch, the Reporting Group has published a pair of stories crafted from federal data. One profiles Ben Barnes, currently the top individual contributor and largest bundler of campaign contributions in the 2010 election cycle. The story, by Luke Rosiak, relies on new disclosures the Federal Election Commission began requiring in 2009, and shows what can be done with them. The second, by Nancy Watzman, finds that the Food and Drug Administration withholds data on 9 of the 25 most heavily prescribed drugs; some of the information is available only on nearly unreadable paper documents.

The reporting of both stories began with digging into data, and following where it led.

The Sunlight Foundation is a non-partisan non-profit that uses cutting-edge technology and ideas to make government transparent and accountable. Visit SunlightFoundation.com to learn more about Sunlight’s projects, including Transparency Corps and Party Time.
###