This is a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) determination issued on February 13th, 2015 by the Illinois Attorney General Public Access Counselor in response to a request for review submitted by an unnamed individual who had submitted 96 FOIA requests to the University of Illinois over a 12 month period and who argued that their status as new media prevented the U of I from treating them as a recurrent requester.
The requester claimed that over the course of 2014, he had issued reports of his “FOIA results at regular intervals to the West Urbana Neighborhood Association (WUNA) listserve” and had also made similar postings to his website over a period of two to three months.
The PAC determined that the requester’s website did not resemble a newspaper, that the requester did not qualify as news media, and that the U of I had correctly treated the requester as a recurrent requester.
University of Illinois FOIA Request for Review – 2015 PAC 33323