Emerald Media Group has created a fundraising campaign, SunshineCampus, to support investigative reporting and public records research.
The University of Oregon, like many other colleges and state agencies, has a policy of charging fees to access public records.
Emerald readers have increasingly asked our student journalists to produce more serious public interest news. But as a small nonprofit company, the Emerald struggles to pay $100 or more to fulfill even small requests.
Frank LoMonte, executive director at the Student Press Law Center, told The Register-Guard that there’s a trend of university administrators making it more expensive to get access to open records.
“Agencies have figured out that journalists don’t have the money to pay for public records, and they don’t have the time to file lawsuits, and so their default response is to cite some jackpot (dollar) amount that they know will be prohibitively large. It’s a way of discouraging people from being inquisitive,” LoMonte told The Register-Guard.
To donate, visit SunshineCampus.com.
For more information:
Sam Stites
Emerald editor in chief