Cheryl McCoy Lecture

The Cheryl McCoy discussion was beneficial to me in many ways, specifically in the methods used to find public records. The public affairs course guide and the web sites mentioned in the lecture will be enormous tools in getting public information for class assignments, as well as papers and assignments I may have to write in other school courses. It will also be extremely helpful in the work I do for my job.
The lecture was helpful concerning what web sites are best to visit when looking for a specific public record. Knowing this information is going to point me in the right direction and help me strain out what and what not is necessary. McCoy reiterated that determining what department handles what information is very important because it allows people to focus on certain web sites rather than searching broadly, hoping to find the information needed to complete a story or assignment.
Another point McCoy made that I thought was useful was how lucky we (students) are that Florida provides so many open public records…something other states don’t have the luxury of. Florida opens up nearly all records to everyone, except student records, which are always sealed, and social security numbers, which are only available to reporters for valid investigations. McCoy further explained that a newspaper story is not a public record. Instead, it is a secondary source. This surprised me a little because I thought that since newspapers are open for everyone to read, it would be called a public record.
Of the sites McCoy brought to my attention, the ones I will end up frequenting to the most will be government in the sunshine at myfloridasunshine.com, the city of Tampa and Hillsborough County web sites, and the Joe Adams home page called idiganswers.com. The idiganswers.com web site is great because it provides links to other helpful sites such as the Florida Sunshine Review, Florida Government sites, and Florida newspapers.