Chicago FOIA requests: Tomorrow's headlines today

The City of Chicago is now posting online all Freedom of Information Act requests submitted by reporters and others, giving anyone who takes a moment to click through the city site's FOIA page by department an idea of what types of stories various media outlets are working on. A scan of the filings from May 1 through today reveals media requests for the following:

Daily Herald: O'Hare landing fees

Bloomberg: United-Continental merger

Trib: a police board case; police report of April 19 death; a tax credit app filed by Hispanic Housing Dev Corp; Dennis Redmond; Friedman & Wexler

Fox Chicago: city car leases; Streets & San drivers' cell phone reports, with GPS (interesting!)

ABC7: homicide stats; fishing for mugshots

WBEZ: juvenile arrests

Sun-Times: violent crimes by beat; water accounts

WGN9: photos of a 2001 triple homicide

ESPN: food inspection?

Chicago Cubs: sign-in sheet of the Commission on Chicago Landmarks

Oh yeah, and the Reader's Mick Dumke is stalking Daley... What else is new?

Apparently, Mayor Daley's pretty pleased about this new move toward transparency. But how about newsrooms that can now readily keep tabs on--and potentially duplicate--requests filed by competitors? Could get interesting.

For instance, I'm looking forward to seeing the Fox report on Streets & San drivers and their whereabouts--unless, of course, someone beats them to it.