My friend Jack Murtha is covering some great stuff at Columbia Journalism Review. Here’s something he wrote about the wider implications of Laura Poitras’s FOIA lawsuit:
http://www.cjr.org/analysis/when_the_documentary_filmmaker_laura.php
Note the reference at the end about how agencies try to get back at journos by posting the results of FOIA requests publicly, and how this is annoying if you’re a reporter who wants a scoop. I don’t see this as a bad thing! And more precedent for government agencies sharing public information publicly can hardly be a bad thing, even if it means reporters get scooped once in a while.
For example, here’s an interesting FOIA request tool: https://www.muckrock.com/ You can use it to generate and send FOIA requests, and then you can share the results for everybody’s benefit: How MuckRock Works