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Cedar Rapids, Iowa 52401
FOI Council honors Gazette journalists as ‘Friends of the First Amendment’
Erin Jordan and Zack Kucharski recognized for commitment to open government and accountability in Iowa
CEDAR RAPIDS — Two Gazette journalists — reporter Erin Jordan and Executive Editor Zack Kucharski — were honored Thursday as “Friends of the First Amendment” for their tenacious commitments to pursing open government and public accountability in Iowa.
The honors were bestowed by the Iowa Freedom of Information Council, a nonprofit education and advocacy organization formed 40 years ago to provide a voice for Iowans who believe in the importance of citizen engagement in government.
The organization honored Jordan, 46, for “her use of Iowa's public records law to gather documents for important investigative projects, including water quality in Iowa, access to police videos, the use of ‘seclusion rooms’ in some school districts, and the lack of transparency in some contracts involving University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics.”
The council recognized Kucharski, 42, as being one of the “most respected voices for better government accountability in Iowa.”
The FOI Council noted that Kucharski has “guided The Gazette's reporting efforts on issues involving city government, area schools, and the University of Iowa. He also led the joint reporting project last year that Iowa newspapers undertook to examine access to videos recorded by law officers on their squad car cameras and their body-worn cameras” — a project that involved statewide reporting by Jordan.
Randy Evans, executive director of the FOI Council, said the organization also honored two others this year as “Friends of the First Amendment”:
- Sara Konrad Baranowski, editor of the Iowa Falls Times Citizen, recognized “for her dogged scrutiny of Iowa's official COVID statistics during 2020, when the disease was spreading across the state. Through her analyses, she was able to document how state public health officials were weeks, and sometimes months, behind in adding positive COVID case outbreaks to the state's website. As a result, some outbreaks at long-term care centers were taken down just days after the outbreaks became public.”
- Sara Anne Willette, an Ames researcher, was “honored for her unceasing efforts to make her Iowa COVID Tracker website an indispensable resource for parents, journalists and other Iowans who want to know the status of the COVID disease and vaccinations in each of Iowa's 99 counties. Her website grew out of widespread public concern with the lack of up-to-date and historic data on the state's public health website. Her site, with its maps and charts, makes school district data available for both students and employees — helping to address the public appetite for information about the status of the disease in their schools.”
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