Press release
Sept. 16, 2022
Contact:
Juli Bunting, WashCOG executive director, info@washingtoncog.org
George Erb, WashCOG secretary, geoerb@seanet.com
WashCOG recognizes Crosscut with a Key Award
The Washington Coalition for Open Government has recognized online news site Crosscut with a Key Award for using public records to tell Washington residents how their agencies are spending billions of dollars in federal pandemic recovery money.
WashCOG presents Key Awards throughout the year to people and organizations that do something notable for the cause of open government. The word “key” is a reference to people who use public records to unlock information for the benefit of the community.
Journalists at Seattle-based Crosscut spent months poring over such documents as spending resolutions, budgets and audit reports to find out how enormous sums of federal relief money are moving through Washington state.
Their reporting laid the foundation for numerous news stories, which Crosscut posted online under the heading Washington Recovery Watch. The news nonprofit, a unit of Cascade Public Media, also posted documents and databases so readers could explore for themselves. Crosscut’s document library is online at https://crosscut.com/WA-Recovery-Watch/Follow-the-funds.
WashCOG President Mike Fancher, a retired journalist, said, “This is isn’t just reporting, it’s civic democracy in action. Very impressive work.”
In August, at Crosscut’s initiative, the news site held a free public workshop that explained the newsroom’s reporting as well as state and federal public records laws. WashCOG was a co-presenter for the online event. More than 50 people attended.
Crosscut used public records to inform residents about the consequential actions of their government, and the news site did so in a spirit of public service by making its information freely available to all.
For those reasons, WashCOG’s board on Sept. 9, 2022 deemed Crosscut worthy of a Key Award. The coalition will formally present the award to Crosscut this fall.
WashCOG is a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization founded in 2002. We are an independent, broad-based advocate for public records, open meetings and informed citizens.