This year marks the 20th anniversary of Sunshine Week celebrated nationally to promote the importance of open government at the federal, state and local levels.
The idea was born more than 20 years ago when Florida newspaper editors started Sunshine Sunday to highlight the need for great government transparency. By 2005, it grew to a full week of open government advocacy nationwide.
The annual collaboration now is coordinated by the Joseph L. Brechner Freedom of Information Project at the University of Florida’s College of Journalism and Communications. About 100 organizations representing news media, public interest groups, and open government advocates have endorsed Sunshine Week.
The Tennessee Coalition for Open Government (TCOG) and the Tennessee Press Association (TPA) are among those organizations. TPA, which was founded more than 150 years ago to support the newspaper industry, played a key role in launching TCOG in 2003 because its leaders and open government advocates realized the public needed a unified voice to protect and strengthen open government laws.
As Jack McElroy, former editor of the Knoxville New Sentinel and a TCOG board member, wrote in his history of the organization, TCOG “is recognized statewide, by citizens and public officials alike, as Tennessee’s pre-eminent source of expertise and advocacy for the public’s right to know.”