In this 30-minute webinar, data reporter for MuckRock, director of the Data Liberation Project and host of FOIAFriday and Research Fellow at Reporting on Addiction Dillon Bergin will break down how he worked with West Virginia University students and Reporting on Addiction to create an open-source database that tracks spending in West Virginia’s 55 counties - and how you can replicate the process in your state. From filing FOIAs to organizing information from email replies, photo copies of checks and bank statements, Dillon and WVU journalism grad student Drew Solt, who have led this project since January, discuss what they’ve learned about filing FOIAs at the county level, organizing requests and responses through MuckRock's virtual system, and preview the reporting to come from their findings.

This conversation is part of Reporting on Addiction’s work to help journalists cover the billions of dollars coming into our communities from the global settlements of the opioid litigation.