The Art of Access: Strategies for Acquiring Public Records. David Cuillier and Charles N. Davis (2010). Washington: CQ Press. pp. 236.
Free For All: The Internet’s Transformation of Journalism. Elliot King (2010). Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press. pp. 328.
If data-driven reporting is a hallmark of the information society, then Cuillier and Davis’ 236-page tome has burst upon that society as a sort of elixir: What spinach is to Popeye, this book would be to public affairs journalists.
“[Y]ou could produce 10 years’ worth of [document-driven reporting] projects from this one book” (p. xxv), the authors boast in the preface. It is not a vain boast. Story ideas ooze from the nine chapters, marshalling a superlative guide to producing record-driven local and hyper-local stories.
