SPJ Sunshine Network will track open-government issues, candidate stands at local and state levels

The Society of Professional Journalists today announced its Sunshine Network, a group of volunteers to highlight open-government issues at local and state levels. The effort is designed to ramp up to Sunshine Week, an annual observance led by the American Society of Newspaper Editors and funded primarily by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. For the 2008 observance, to be held March 16-22, the theme is to ask candidates for president and other offices about freedom-of-information issues.

"Volunteers will identify key problems in their states’ freedom of information laws, develop three to five questions to be posed to state and local political candidates, and then encourage journalists and others to get candidates’ responses on the record," SPJ said in a release. “It is crucial that citizens know candidate positions on open, transparent government,” SPJ President Clint Brewer said in the statement. “The American people deserve to know whether politicians asking for public trust in each state believe government should be accountable.”

The effort is an extension of ASNE's national Sunshine Campaign, which has begun a work on a database of federal candidates' stances and statements on open government issues. SPJ has compiled other databases on freedom of information, including a state-by-state breakdown of access to prisons. (Read more)