About Sunshine Week
What We Do
Sunshine Week occurs each year in mid-March, coinciding with James Madison’s birthday, March 16 (1751). Madison was a driving force behind the Constitutional Convention of 1787 and presented the first version of the Bill of Rights to Congress. He also was the fourth president of the United States.
Coordinated by the nonpartisan Joseph L. Brechner Freedom of Information Project at the University of Florida College of Journalism and Communications, Sunshine Week helps educate the public, journalists, lawmakers, and others on the right to know in the U.S. states and federal government. Sunshine Week provides materials for publication, encourages year-around collaboration among more than 100 partners, hosts an in-person Sunshine Fest conference, highlights the effective use of public records by engaged citizens, showcases freedom of information events, and provides fun activities and other resources.
Sunshine Week is funded in part through an endowment from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, as well as endowments held by the Joseph L. Brechner Freedom of Information Project at the University of Florida College of Journalism and Communications, as part of its land-grant university mission to educate journalists and the public about their rights to civic information. The Knight Foundation supports democracy by funding free expression and journalism, arts and culture in community, research in areas of media and democracy, and in the success of American cities and towns where the Knight brothers once had newspapers. If you would like to get involved with Sunshine Week, please contact Sunshine Week Coordinator Diana Mitsu Klos at consultdmk@gmail.com
20 Years of Sunshine: Our History
September 11, 2001, is a day that lives in infamy.
As many across the world watched the calculated terrorism attack that took the lives of nearly 3,000 people and injured thousands more, all eyes were on United States government officials who were charged with mending the pieces of an unthinkable fallout.
In the weeks following the attack, the federal government responded. But, to a few news leaders in Florida, the response wasn’t exactly what they expected. Instead, Tim Franklin, who was the top editor at the Orlando Sentinel at the time, says data and information that was once readily available began disappearing at an alarming rate as Congress and legislatures began passing more and more exemptions.
Their reasoning: protecting and defending U.S. national security post-9/11.
“Suddenly, we’re seeing government secrecy at an all-time high,” Franklin said. “It was becoming an issue that was unchecked because anytime it was questioned, the response was “it’s a matter of national security.’”
So, Franklin says he and colleagues, including like Debra Gersh Hernandez, Pete Weitzel, Andrew Alexander and Don Lindley started having phone calls with the Florida First Amendment Foundation’s Barbara Petersen. Franklin and Lindley both sat on the board for the Florida Society of News Editors.
Back then, Florida’s Legislature was working to pass some 150 bills that would, in one way or another, diminish the public’s ability to monitor its government.
Franklin says it was out of those phone calls that the organization, with the support of editors across Florida and FFAF, began Sunshine Sunday in March 2002, which they strategically centered on the weekend of James Madison’s birthday, March 16 (1751).
Madison, who crafted the Bill of Rights, is often credited for promoting freedom of information, particularly with the oft-cited quote, “A popular Government, without popular information, or the means of acquiring it, is but a Prologue to a Farce or a Tragedy; or, perhaps both” (although, research by the Brechner FOI Project notes that quote was in reference to public K-12 education, not freedom of information).
“Sunshine Sunday” made sense, given the nickname of the “Sunshine State” and the famous quote by former Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis that “Sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants; electric light the most efficient policeman.”
The goal was simple but impactful: raise awareness around the need for open government and our right to know.
Lindley, at the time editor of the Daytona Beach News-Journal, called every daily newspaper in Florida, urging editors, journalists and cartoonists to publish work that highlighted the importance of Florida’s access laws.
By 2005, the grassroots movement was progressing and catching the eye of other journalists – by the third Sunshine Sunday, nearly 300 proposed exemptions had fallen.
That interest was also matched by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. Eric Newton, who at the time was director of journalism initiatives for Knight, says the foundation has always played an instrumental role in freedom of information issues, with Jack Knight’s legacy of leading efforts to create the nation’s first freedom of information laws back in 1966.
Newton said he was giving a talk at the Newseum building in Washington, D.C., to the American Society of Newspaper Editors leaders like Lucy Daglish, Rick Blum and Kevin Goldberg, who agreed to back the initiative’s national launch.
“Everyone was really excited about Sunshine Sunday,” Newton said. “And in the speech, I let it be known that Knight would be willing to help with something that was national.”
And so, Sunshine Week was launched in 2005 with support. Sunshine Week occurs each year in mid-March.
During this week, the goal of the initiative is to urge and spread awareness around open government and the needed push for “sunlight.”
For years, during Sunshine Week, government officials have issued proclamations citing the importance of the public’s right to know, cartoonists have offered editorial cartoons depicting government transparency while newsrooms across the country continually support the mission by publishing columns informing the public about the legacy of freedom of information.
Since then, ASNE merged with Associated Press Media Editors to become News Leaders Association in 2019. When that organization dissolved in 2023, operations around Sunshine Week were transferred to the Joseph L. Brechner Freedom of Information Project at the University of Florida College of Journalism and Communications.
Now, Sunshine Week is funded in part by the endowment from Knight Foundation created to support organizing efforts, as well as endowments at the Brechner FOI Project, as part of its land-grant university mission to educate journalists and the public about their rights to civic information. Under the Brechner FOI Project, Sunshine Week has an outreach coordinator, Sydney Sims, profiles FOI champions using public records to improve their communities, created a new in-person Sunshine Fest conference, and launched a year-around virtual collaboration of the Sunshine United Network (SUN).
Contact Us
Diana Mitsu Klos
Sunshine Week Coordinator
Email
David Cuillier
Brechner Center FOI Project Director
Email