Dear Friend of Press Freedom,

I’m Sophie Hagen, advocacy program manager at Freedom of the Press Foundation (FPF), stepping in for Lauren Harper, our Daniel Ellsberg chair on government secrecy, while she’s away. Welcome to the Classifieds.

This week, we announced the winners of the inaugural Penlight Prize, our award for paywall-free reporting based on public records requests via federal or state public records laws. We were thrilled to award first place to USA Today reporter Austin Fast, second place to independent journalist Robert J. Lopez, and third place to The Marshall Project’s Brittany Hailer, Ilica Mahajan, and Michelle Billman. We encourage you to read their submissions and learn more about their reporting processes.

But many other submissions showcased the tenacity and real-world impact that are hallmarks of excellent public records reporting. Here are some of the pieces that didn’t win, but which our panel of all-star judges — Kate Doyle, senior analyst at the National Security Archive; Jameel Jaffer, executive director at the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University; and Jason Leopold, senior investigative reporter at Bloomberg — called out as particularly strong.

A system of harm
William Skipworth, New Hampshire Bulletin
A three-part series exposing the systemic failures in New Hampshire’s intellectual and developmental disability care system.

‘A muzzle on elected officials’: NDAs ‘cloak’ Louisiana’s biggest business developments
Drew Hawkins, Type Investigations, Gulf States Newsroom, WWNO
Revealing an emerging practice under Gov. Jeff Landry of elected officials signing nondisclosure agreements for the alleged purpose of economic development — and allowing developments involving public money to be planned without public knowledge.

Guns in dangerous hands: She begged for help. This state’s probation gap may have put her in danger.
Paige Pfleger and Mariam Elba, WPLN News and ProPublica
Investigating the period of suspended oversight in Tennessee’s probation supervision system that has had deadly consequences for domestic violence survivors.

US law enforcement warns of ‘anti-tech extremism’ as AI hatred grows
Daniel Boguslaw, Wired
Exposing a new focus by the U.S. domestic surveillance apparatus on so-called anti-technology extremism, grouping a sprawling selection of people and activities for targeting.

Payback: tracking the opioid settlement cash
Aneri Pattani, KFF Health News
Tracking how state and local governments use — or misuse — the tens of billions of dollars opioid manufacturers, distributors, and retailers have paid to settle lawsuits about their role in the overdose epidemic, with little oversight.

Smile, you’re on Flock: Inside San Mateo County's expanding surveillance system
Jiya Venkatesh, Anoushka Swaminathan, and Maximus Kwan, (Carlmont High School) Scot Scoop
Investigating the Flock Safety automatic license plate readers across California’s San Mateo County that share data with hundreds of agencies and form an interconnected surveillance network, of which most residents are unaware.

Transparency falls short: Inside Carlmont’s expansive surveillance system
Radhika Agrawal and Maximus Kwan, Scot Scoop
Revealing a largely secret but publicly funded surveillance network at work throughout the Sequoia Union High School District.

ICE’s plan to let cops around the country scan faces to verify immigration status
Joseph Cox, 404 Media
Revealing plans by Immigration and Customs Enforcement to give hundreds of local law enforcement agencies a facial recognition app that would query an image database to verify someone’s immigration status.

An 8-month, $1M fix became an 8-year, $19.3M sewer repair in Arecibo
Gabriela Carrasquillo Piñeiro, Centro de Periodismo Investigativo
Examining the years of delays and spiraling costs involved in repairing a sewer line crossing the Río Grande de Arecibo that collapsed under the storm surge generated by Hurricane María.

We’re grateful to everyone who participated. Reporting that relies on government records generated at taxpayers’ expense should be free for all, and we were so pleased to honor the journalists doing the hard work of unearthing government documents.

Transparently yours,

Sophie Hagen
Freedom of the Press Foundation