Matt Sanchez, writing for the Citizen Media Law Project:

Washington state political blogger Stefan Sharkansky won a $225,000 settlement last week from a county government that took two years to comply with his request for information. The settlement ended Sharkansky’s lawsuit against King County over officials’ improper delay in producing documents related to the state’s 2004 gubernatorial election.

Sadly, the victory is bittersweet. Sharkansky says the documents reveal that King County officials counted hundreds of ineligible ballots in an election decided by 133 votes. …

Sharkansky’s story is a great example of how bloggers can contribute to the public dialogue. Sharkansky saw a hole in news coverage of an important event and took it upon himself to fill it. Doing so didn’t require any specialized journalistic knowledge, save for a few basics on freedom of information that one can easily acquire in a quick glance at CMLP’s Legal Guide.

Tags: Civic Participation, Journalism, Public Records Struggles

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 30th, 2009 at 10:13 pm and is filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.