Tim Nickens lecture

Last Tuesday, Tim Nickens, an editor for the St. Pete Times, visited the class to talk about his experience using public records.  He had lots of fascinating stories about how public records can be really important for writing stories.  He had a story about how public records brought down a politician who was using his government money to pay for his $6M private plane hangar.  I thought it was hilarious!  It made me think more about how journalists have to be sadistic in this profession. 
As journalists, we are the ones catching corrupt politicians with their asses up.  It's up to us to let the public know what these scumbags are doing with our hard-earned tax dollars.  All we need to do is find the evidence.  If it wasn't for public records, this dirty politician would still be in control, wasting your money.  They try to cover their tracks well, but all it takes is to find something out of the ordinary in someone's budget or their other public records, ask them about it, if they say something that doesn't match up or make sense to what that record says, go find the dissonance, catch them lying, and boom, their career in public office is no more.  Their career.  For us to be the one to expose them of their shady and otherwise unknown wrongs, and have their source of income taken away from them, affecting their personal lives and families, we have to have no heart sometimes, or a good way of justifying it within ourselves.  But it's pretty simple to justify exposing a politician.  If Joe Politician broke the law, the law he probably MADE, then he doesn't deserve to be a politician.  If Joe Politician is wasting your tax money on his new jet, I think you would want to know about it, and I think you would not want him to do that.  Public records are great for catching politicians with their ass up!