Indeed, on both the analysis and possibilities offered. A few thoughts:
We, the Invisible Institute, are in exactly the space you describe. Our primary digital product, cpdp.co, contains by the far the most complete and detailed record of the Chicago Police “behavior” over the past 20 years. Its driven by FOIA (which they so far haven’t dismantled!) It’s now visited by over 200,000 people each year – mostly from Chicago, but from all over the world.
It is our experience that it is not possible for ANY government of ANY political leaning, to keep and curate this kind of data. It must be done independently. We are currently developing a new national digital product that tracks how and where individual officers move through departments around the country, often avoiding scrutiny for past misconduct.
Our well known investigative reporting is largely driven by deep analysis of these data.
There are real possibilities here for journalists. But, most shops lack the combination of FOIA skills, the data analytics skills, and ability to make large complex data usable and interesting to the public. The good news is that those skills are readily available in folks from many disciplines outside journalism.
Losing those federal data troves feels, at first, like a door slamming shut. Yet your essay reframes the moment as a threshold: where absence itself becomes an investigative clue and a market gap worth filling.
Three take-aways I’m pocketing for the next newsroom brainstorm:
1. The Negative-Space Story – When an agency quietly deletes dashboards or archives, that redaction reveals as much as the numbers once did. Tracking the why and who benefits can surface narratives we’d never find in a CSV.
2. Open-Source Reclamation – Crowdsourced back-ups, FOIA “rescue missions,” and civic-tech mirrors can turn data loss into a community-building exercise. Each volunteer who scraps a PDF or rebuilds an API becomes a stakeholder in public transparency.
3. New Business Models in the Rubble – As you note, journalism can’t live on outrage alone. Services that curate, verify, and visualize resurrected datasets offer value people will actually pay for—precisely because the official well has gone dry.
Grateful for the lens flip here, Richard. Let’s transform every vanished dataset into a map of fresh leads—and build newsrooms resilient enough to thrive even when the lights “accidentally” go out. Onward.
When I launched a news website in West Hollywood, CA, one of the most popular features was “WeHo by the Numbers,” with info gathered by a data-obsessed local geek. For our readers, it was full of surprises.
Thanks, a really valuable perspective on this seemingly nihilistic behavior (let's know less!. If you erase the record, you get to rewrite it. It's an old principle of the most totalitarian of communist regimes - control history. People vanish, numbers are changed. Remember Winston's job in 1984!
Everybody I know is asking what stands between us and this abyss. Courts? That battle is underway. But I am hearing from many a new appreciation of the centrality of journalism. Dick has described one of the early and important battles.
Indeed, on both the analysis and possibilities offered. A few thoughts:
We, the Invisible Institute, are in exactly the space you describe. Our primary digital product, cpdp.co, contains by the far the most complete and detailed record of the Chicago Police “behavior” over the past 20 years. Its driven by FOIA (which they so far haven’t dismantled!) It’s now visited by over 200,000 people each year – mostly from Chicago, but from all over the world.
It is our experience that it is not possible for ANY government of ANY political leaning, to keep and curate this kind of data. It must be done independently. We are currently developing a new national digital product that tracks how and where individual officers move through departments around the country, often avoiding scrutiny for past misconduct.
Our well known investigative reporting is largely driven by deep analysis of these data.
There are real possibilities here for journalists. But, most shops lack the combination of FOIA skills, the data analytics skills, and ability to make large complex data usable and interesting to the public. The good news is that those skills are readily available in folks from many disciplines outside journalism.
Losing those federal data troves feels, at first, like a door slamming shut. Yet your essay reframes the moment as a threshold: where absence itself becomes an investigative clue and a market gap worth filling.
Three take-aways I’m pocketing for the next newsroom brainstorm:
1. The Negative-Space Story – When an agency quietly deletes dashboards or archives, that redaction reveals as much as the numbers once did. Tracking the why and who benefits can surface narratives we’d never find in a CSV.
2. Open-Source Reclamation – Crowdsourced back-ups, FOIA “rescue missions,” and civic-tech mirrors can turn data loss into a community-building exercise. Each volunteer who scraps a PDF or rebuilds an API becomes a stakeholder in public transparency.
3. New Business Models in the Rubble – As you note, journalism can’t live on outrage alone. Services that curate, verify, and visualize resurrected datasets offer value people will actually pay for—precisely because the official well has gone dry.
Grateful for the lens flip here, Richard. Let’s transform every vanished dataset into a map of fresh leads—and build newsrooms resilient enough to thrive even when the lights “accidentally” go out. Onward.
When I launched a news website in West Hollywood, CA, one of the most popular features was “WeHo by the Numbers,” with info gathered by a data-obsessed local geek. For our readers, it was full of surprises.
Thanks, a really valuable perspective on this seemingly nihilistic behavior (let's know less!. If you erase the record, you get to rewrite it. It's an old principle of the most totalitarian of communist regimes - control history. People vanish, numbers are changed. Remember Winston's job in 1984!
Everybody I know is asking what stands between us and this abyss. Courts? That battle is underway. But I am hearing from many a new appreciation of the centrality of journalism. Dick has described one of the early and important battles.
Great idea! What about economic data that might not be so easily available?
Thanks. Depending on what it is, may be worth thinking about how to create a valid proxy.