Bill Allison, Sunlight Foundation editorial director, provides a guide for integrating additional data into your investigative reporting during the free, daylong workshop, "Follow the Money -- Tracking Companies' Influence on Politics." For more information about free training for business journalists, please visit businessjournalism.org.

1. Integrating other data
It’s not just the contributions

2. Remember what makes a good
story…
 It’s not just one piece
of data or one fact
 Rather, link together
a series of facts that
show a story
 Lobbying
 Legislation
 Regulatory actions
 Contracting

3. Here are some tools to help you
 …find out about federal regulatory matters
 …find out what contributors want from Washington
(lobbying records)
 …find out about federal spending
 …find out about sources of state data
 …find out how much you can find out a business

4. On the federal level, regulations matter
 Companies comment on them
 Companies lobby on them
 Politicians rail against them

5. Influence Explorer tracks
comments

6. Drill down to individual comments

7. Compare it to their lobbying reports

8. To get details, hop over to
OpenSecrets.org

9. What are their big lobbying
issues?

10.  Information taken from
lobbying reports
 These show broad
issues.
 If you click the number
in the middle column,
you can see the
detailed descriptions,
sometimes including
bills and regulations
they lobby on

11.  Way down the page, we
see they’re monitoring
regulations
 Not always as specific as
we’d like
 It’s good to read through
all the specific issues
 You learn a lot about
what government is doing
from these
 You learn a lot about
business too

12.  Here is a real rarity
 Disclosed meeting
with U.S. Senators
 Disclosed topics of
meetings
 Met with Sen. Roy
Blunt, R-Mo.
 Met with Sen. Claire
McCaskill, R-Mo.
 Discussed Mongolia
trip by Blunt
 Discussed investment
in Asia

13. Blunt did go to Mongolia

14. He’s also a top recipient of
Peabody Energy donations
 Not surprising, he’s the home Senator
 McCaskill not listed, Talent is

15. A May 27, 2008, wikileaks cable
 Peabody officials in
Mongolia
 Seeking concessions to
mine there
 Peabody met with
opposition leaders
 What is Blunt talking
about there three years
later?

16. Who’s lobbying for them?

17. Former staffers, members of
Congress, administration officials
 Click yellow icon for
revolvers
 Red icon is for ex-
members only
 Click icons to get
profiles

18. Revolving door profile
 A lobbyist for Peabody
Energy
 Works for K&L Gates
 Former staffer for
Max Baucus
 Former Senate
Finance staffer

19. What can we find at the state
level?
 Be aware that there’s
no uniformity among
state lobbying
disclosure
 Some are similar to
federal disclosures
 Others show only
wining & dining of
lawmakers
 Some show less than
that

20. Not the most user-friendly
database
 Look up organizations in one place to see who they hire…
 Then search in another place for what they’re doing
 You need to keep a lot of tabs open on your browser…

21. Go someplace else to search…

22. Results!
 And they’re not
pretty
 Have to click through
each monthly report
 Some might useful,
some aren’t
 NIMSP is looking at
the problem
 But with 50 different
systems to tackle…

23. Have to do this the old fashioned
way
 Have to click
through every
report
 I did so you won’t
have to
 Here’s what’s
disclosed in
Missouri…

24. Some info on contacts
 Lawmakers
and spouses
named
 Expenses
reported
 Under groups,
sometimes
whole
committees
are wined &
dined

25. At the very bottom…
 …we see who put up the massive sum of $180.
 Note that we don’t see lobbying fees
 Note that, unlike federal lobbying, issues aren’t
reported
 At least you have enough information to know who to
call

26. Some good resources for
navigating what’s available
 NIMSP has a run down of
all state laws on lobbying
disclosure
 National Conference on
State Legislatures has
pages too
 Groups that do a lot of
lobbying, like Assoc.
Builders & Contractors,
have lists & links too

27. Why this is important
 Companies you cover can have issues in multiple states
 Their bottom lines can be affected by decisions made far
from their headquarters

28. A few other resources…
 OpenMissouri.org is a
hugely useful reference
on gov’t data sets
 Even if you’re not from
Missouri, it’s worth
looking at
 Get ideas for data sets
that might be available
in your state…

29. StateIntegrity.org
 Assessments
of state laws
on…
 Lobbying
 Ethics
 Campaign
contributions
 Budgeting
 Pensions
 And more…

30. And always, feel free to
contact me
Bill Allison
Editorial Director
Sunlight Foundation
Ballison@sunlightfoundation.com 202-742-1520 ext 224
@bill_allison