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Seventh Annual
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| Cory’s message to Florida editors Dear Editors: Thank you for your continued support of the Sunshine Sunday campaign in Florida. You’re making a difference in defending government openness. This year, March 16 has been designated as Sunshine Sunday by the Florida Society of Newspaper Editors and the American Society of Newspaper Editors. As you will see below, this may be our biggest effort ever with additional online resources, guest columnists, news stories and an audit of government agencies’ responses to requests for public records. Last year, nearly every daily newspaper in Florida participated. We urge you to support the effort again this year. We’re asking newspapers to produce and publish editorials, columns, news stories and/or editorial cartoons on March 16 to help raise public awareness of the importance of open government in our state. If you intend to participate, please e-mail or call Cory Lancaster at cory.lancaster@news-jrnl.com (386-681-2440) with a brief description of your plans by Monday, March 3. Please tell us who will be your newspaper’s contact on this effort, including their e-mail address and phone number. This will ensure your content is properly posted on the FSNE Web site, www.fsne.org, and shared nationally through the ASNE site. Also, we’re asking newspapers to participate in a voluntary audit to test government agencies’ compliance with Florida’s public records laws. Details about the audit, which will require a few public records requests during the week of March 3, will be made available soon. To volunteer for the audit, please e-mail or call Mike Connelly at mike.connelly@heraldtribune.com (941-361-4991) no later than Wednesday, Feb. 27. If you need content for Sunshine Sunday, FSNE will provide guest columns/op-ed pieces from Gov. Charlie Crist, First Amendment Foundation President Barbara Petersen and two other national experts. These can be downloaded from the Web site starting Thursday, March 13. Also, the Florida AP will write stories about the results of the statewide audit and the effectiveness of the Governor’s Office of Open Government. This year, FSNE also will expand its multi-media presentation to include a Q&A video with Barbara Petersen, a tutorial on open meetings and records, and links to key resources in the state and in the nation, as well as links to the content from newspapers across the state. Florida’s Sunshine Sunday effort is being done in conjunction with the ASNE’s Sunshine Week 2008. The ASNE will post a large amount of Sunshine Week content on the Web site www.sunshineweek.org, including whatever content we put on the FSNE site. The technical details to post and download are below. Thanks for your support. Regards,
Please submit contributions, questions or comments to: sunshine2008@fsne.org. |
