Knowing where to look for news

Open-source documents an often overlooked scoop repository

A lot of great scoops about government are hiding in plain sight.

Open-source documents offering juicy news nuggets are often overlooked by reporters, who may not even know to look for them. Stepping off the treadmill of press releases, news conferences, calendar events and other pre-digested sources can pay dividends to enterprising journalists who are ready to break from the pack.

Some time ago, I wrote a blog listing the top open-source websites that I checked first thing in the morning as a working journalist in the Parliamentary bureau of The Canadian Press and later the CBC.

Several times each week, I would find something unusual, noteworthy, offbeat, surprising and unreported that with some legwork became an exclusive news story. Or these websites would inspire an access-to-information request that could be tightly targeted. Or I would flip the item to a colleague with expertise in the subject matter for possible followup. The daily checks took perhaps 15 minutes of my time.

That blog remains relevant, with links that I verified recently. And to show that open-source records can still generate exclusive stories, here are some fresh examples from the trenches to celebrate and inspire:

Bill Curry at the Globe and Mail wrote a story about the impact of proposed regulations affecting payday loans. His source:

“The Finance Department has been consulting on details related to the measures, leading to draft regulations that were published in the Dec. 23 edition of the Canada Gazette. The draft regulations are accompanied by economic modelling outlining the expected costs and benefits.”

CBC’s Elizabeth Thompson wrote about how Mary Ellen Turpel-Lafond was dropped from the Order of Canada. Her source:

“In a notice in Saturday's Canada Gazette, Rideau Hall announced that, in response to Turpel-Lafond's own request, her membership in the Order of Canada has been terminated. That request was subsequently approved by Governor General Mary Simon through an ordinance signed on Sept. 26, 2023.”

CBC’s Brett Forester wrote about a huge increase in Canada’s liabilities to Indigenous peoples. His source:

“[C]ontingent liabilities … are potential legal obligations recorded only in cases where the probability of future payment is considered "likely," according to to the 2023 public accounts of Canada.”

The Hill-Times’ Laura Ryckewaert wrote about higher losses in money, property and revenue to the federal government in 2022-23. Her source:

“[T]he latest Public Accounts detail the federal spending and losses between April 1, 2022, and March 31, 2023. Losses in revenue, money, and property are outlined in the third volume of the accounts.”

The Investigative Journalism Foundation’s Carly Penrose wrote about rideshare drivers pressing to have Uber and Lyft reveal how much they make from each fare. Her source:

“Those are just some of the insights from the IJF’s roundup of [public] lobbying registrations at the federal level and in every province across Canada. Each week, the IJF publishes data from our four lobbying databases showing who wants laws changed and who is asking for government money.”

Andrew McIntosh and Kamyar Razavi at Global News wrote about a new injection of money into Trans Mountain. Their source:

“The new loans … are guaranteed through the ‘Canada Account’ at the Export Development Corporation (EDC). The information was posted to the website of the EDC, a federal Crown corporation, on the Friday before Christmas.”

And so on. The next big scoop may be staring you in the face.