For more than a decade, the Chicago Headline Club’s FOIA Fest conference has brought together award-winning investigative journalists, attorneys and experts to host a wide range of interactive training sessions, panels and workshops. FOIA Fest gives reporters, organizers and everyday people the tools they need to turn public records into impactful insights and investigations.
The 2025 conference will take place March 22 at the Northwestern University Medill School of Journalism's downtown campus.
A full conference program
The annual public records conference will include pressing conversations about the legal and security threats newsrooms and journalists are likely to face, as well as workshops, case studies and breakout sessions about the Freedom of Information Act, accountability reporting and other investigative techniques.
The Headline Club this year will be offering programming across three tracks: FOIA 101, Advanced FOIA and Beyond FOIA. Sessions will cover topics such as using FOIA to report on schools, navigating FOIA-unfriendly public agencies, FOIA ethics and best practices, and AI and journalism.
Pulitzer Prize-winners Trina Reynolds-Tyler (Invisible Institute) and Sarah Conway (City Bureau) will discuss their seven-part investigative series “Missing in Chicago” in this year’s keynote conversation.
A Driehaus Foundation investigative journalism grant supports FOIA Fest programming, including the Watchdog Award and the FOIA Fest Boot Camp, a mentorship program that pairs early-career reporters with veteran journalists who work together through a FOIA-driven project. The Driehaus Foundation has supported the Chicago Headline Club since 2005 and FOIA Fest since 2021.
