Agenda Takeover: Fourth Estate 48

Dillon Rosenblatt brings the receipts...

We’re still on vacation, but luckily there are a bunch of great newsletters in Arizona that we want to introduce you to, including our Fourth Estate 48, from our friend and former Capitol Times colleague Dillon Rosenblatt.

Fourth Estate 48 is keyed in on that critical aspect of reporting that gets lost in that day-to-day rush to feed the beast: public records.

The entire newsletter is organized around bringing the public receipts, literally and figuratively, for what Arizona politicians are up to. Public records are the cornerstone of good journalism, and Dillon is out there digging them up for us all to enjoy!

If you’re not already a subscriber, click that button and help him afford more records.

Hello Arizona Agenda readers, 

I’m Dillon Rosenblatt, the sole operator of Fourth Estate 48¹ on Substack. Fourth Estate 48 is a public records-based newsletter in Arizona dedicated to holding government officials and entities accountable while always bringing the receipts. 

I research, report, write, edit, publish and promote stories by myself, which comes with plenty of challenges but is also incredibly rewarding and freeing. 

Before this, I spent years bouncing around several local outlets in Phoenix, picking up tips and tricks on how to be a better journalist. I even learned from Hank over three years at the Arizona Capitol Times and Yellow Sheet Report and owe a lot of my career (and even my newsletter) to him. 

I picked up several accolades for my reporting, including the first place award for political reporting at the Arizona Press Club in 2021, and you’ll find in a majority of those stories there was one similar element to the reporting. Public records. 

I launched Fourth Estate 48 almost exactly one year ago, on August 10, 2022, and have used public records to break big stories and shed a light on issues in government.

For example, I found out that failed secretary of state candidate Mark Finchem lied on the debate stage last year about never voting by mail. He had been one of the chief voices villainizing mail voting, which is the preferred voting method of about 90% of Arizonans.

Mark Finchem's voter file shows he votes by mail

I also used records and data to show how wealthy Arizonans capitalizing the most on the new universal school voucher program. School vouchers are something of a black box, but from looking at the zip codes for voucher recipients, I was able to show that the vast majority live in wealthy neighborhoods.

Wealthy Arizonans love ESAs

I always love digging through government contracts for red flags. I uncovered an exclusive government contracts Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes granted his top political consultant earlier this year.

Fontes gives exclusive government contract to his top political consultant

And I found another contract between the Arizona Senate and an election denier they hired to work on the Elections Committee.

Arizona Senate GOP gives contract to election denier

I also get meta sometimes and write about public records. Like when I pointed out a loophole in state law exempting some state agencies from turning over a public records redaction log and providing them a way to withhold records entirely without being sued. 

I won’t explain how public records works in Arizona because the Agenda already did soon after they launched and even made a handy public records zine, but just know it can get pretty grueling and in most cases is not free.

I have a small but loyal readership, especially for something as niche as public records in Arizona. But Fourth Estate 48 needs your help to keep digging up government secrets.

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But I want to take a minute to explain why I’m focusing solely on public records and why I think they are important to a working democracy. 

Through my years as a politics and government reporter, some of my best work began as a public records request. And I was curious what other reporters were doing that I wasn’t. So I started filing public records request for the public records requests that government agencies received.  

What I found was not many full-time daily reporters were sending public records requests. I get it though, when you are tasked with daily coverage of hot button issues at the Arizona Capitol, covering an election, a pandemic, etc., you don’t really have the time to send a request, periodically follow up on said request and fight with bureaucrats in hopes that the documents you’re seeking have something worth writing about.

Not to mention newsroom are simply overstretched from hears of slashing staff and underpaying workers –– all realities I’ve dealt with in newsrooms like Phoenix New Times and Arizona Capitol Times. 

So I familiarized myself with state public records law (not to be confused with FOIA, which is the federal law) and annoyed every attorney under the sun with questions like: is this legal? Is this a public record? Can they deny this request? How should I word this differently? And will you sue them for me please? 

A lot of it was trial and error and that’s exactly how I operate Fourth Estate 48 now.

Going independent to me meant I could tell the stories I thought needed to be told and could essentially throw spaghetti at a wall to see what sticks. I always ask myself “does anybody even care about this?” and the stories where I think “probably not” but publish it anyway are often the ones I get the most responses on. 

Like the time I got records about citizens naming a new snowplow in Flagstaff or the email from the lawmaker who didn’t like his legislative photo. Anything can be a public record!

If you think reading about public records is something you’d be interested in, please help me stay in business, holding the Arizona government accountable and always bringing the receipts.

1. It’s a portmanteau made up of: Fourth Estate = journalism and State 48 = Arizona