General tips

HMI in 2012 – and 2013

Time for an update on what’s happening across the Help Me Investigate network – and if you want to join in.

Help Me Investigate Health has been very active. Alex Plough has been looking at CCGs: the new bodies wh…

What to do when an FOI response is not provided in the form asked for

Heard the one about the FOI request for data to be provided in an Excel spreadsheet? The authority printed it out, scanned it, and sent a PDF version of the scan.

You’ll forgive the journalist for being suspicious when an autho…

The best way to set up a spreadsheet for inputting FOI responses

On Help Me Investigate the Olympics we’ve been sending FOI requests to all of the local authorities which hosted the Olympic torch relay. 

That’s the easy part. The difficult bit is compiling the results into something meaningful. T…

Secret City, a documentary investigation into the City of London,the Corporation that runs it and its role in the financial crisis.

Imagine a city consisting of fewer than 10 thousand residents. Imagine that city’s government elected by businesses, and the bigger the business, the more votes it has. This city has funds amounting to billions of pounds, accumula…

How to start investigating Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCGs)

This week, Help Me Investigate embarks on a significant project to investigate the new bodies which will control £60m of public health spending in England: Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCGs). 
As part of that project, we’re pu…

Get involved in a new HMI project: investigating CCGs

This year a collection of new groups will be given responsibility for £60m of public health spending in England. Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCGs).
It’s a journalism basic to ‘follow the money’, but with over 200 of these groups…

Olympic torch relay investigation now available in Kindle store

Our ebook 8,000 Holes: How the 2012 Olympic Torch Relay Lost its Way has now been published in the Kindle store. All proceeds go to the Brittle Bone Society. Tell your friends – or gift it!
 

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A case study in online journalism: investigating the Olympic torch relay

Over at the Online Journalism Blog I’ve written three posts on the background to the investigation into the Olympic torch relay which resulted in a number of national, local and international stories, and the ebook 8,000 Holes. 

Par…

Six questions to ask before you submit an FOI

David Higgerson suggests six questions that journalists can ask to improve the end results of a possible FOI request – or save you sending one entirely. they are:

Is this information available elsewhere?
Will they release the infor…

New guidelines on the ‘FOI for environmental reporting’ – EIR

Cleland Thom provides another of his useful roundups on ‘right to know’ laws in the UK. This time it’s the Environmental Information Regulations (EIR), a set of regulations which work in a similar way to the Freedom of Information Act, but …