On our first episode of 2026 we're joined by David Covucci. David is the editor-in-chief of FOIAball – FOIA standing for "Freedom of Information Act." It's a newsletter that uses public records reporting to investigate college football. As he said- collectives, consultants, cops, contracts, and communications.
Whether or not you like sports, I think you'll find this conversation informative as we're going to talk about the idea of finding a niche in a very crowded field.
One day David might be writing about how much teams are spending on bundt cake and balloons. Another, he might be doing a deep investigative piece on an NIL collective allegedly funneling booster payments to a non-profit so that the donation could be used as a tax write-off.
David talked about his experience with FOIA requests and what led him to doing a newsletter centered around them and college football. Below is a lightly-edited excerpt from the interview.
How did you get the idea for what you're currently doing?
I was running this public records internship (at The Daily Dot) … And the whole time I was doing it, I was sort of noodling over things that I could do. I never was able to file the requests. Sometimes I'd have the interns file 'em for me and they'd get all the credit for the stories, which was much deserved. But I was kicking this around: What could I do that would be something people would pay for? And the idea that came up was public records on college football reporting. It just popped into my head one day.
I didn't start right away. I was still at my job. But as soon as I got laid off in May I said, let me take a month. Let me see if I can do this. Let me send out some requests. Let's see what comes back.
And after a month, I was like, all right, I think maybe I have something here.
I want us to talk about Freedom of Information Act requests, just so that we have a sense of what they are, for those that aren't fully familiar with that kind of reporting. What does a request look like?
So the fun thing about the Freedom of Information Act is that, for anyone that doesn't know, it's a government law that states that government officials, civil servants- their power is granted by the people. We're a democracy.
So they represent us. In 2025 it's a very novel concept but it was pushed through by one very determined (politician) who just thought that he was fed up with classification at the Department of Defense and thought people should have a right to know things and passed this law.
It basically says that any record the government produces, the people have a right to see. This law was passed in the 1950s, so there was no e-mail, there was no online forms you could submit. So the law was based on people walking into government offices and saying 'I would like to see this record. I want to see that.'
So, a freedom of information request doesn't have to be anything very complicated. I've gotten lots of things off single-sentence requests. I've written very deep long requests. You don't need to know the law. You should know the law if you want to do it. I think that's very important. But you're not required to be a lawyer. You're not required to be a journalist.
Any person can go to any government agency that's small, local governments, police departments, state agencies, the animal control office or state police or federal agencies.
That's a little difficult these days, but there's still great civil servants, who are working on FOIA requests to the federal government too. So basically you don't have to do a lot. If you ask for big things that'll get shot down. If you ask for things that don't exist you can't get that.
But a request doesn't have to be anything formal at all. In a lot of states, you're not even required to give them your name.
I feel like there's this very hard news aspect to you and there's these little traces of let's try and get something about Osama Bin Laden's pornography collection (something David FOIA'd in the past) within the way that you approach college football.
I've always had a distinct personality, but I've always been myself.
When I was starting this, I said: I wanna do the journalism I wanna do, and that is big investigative pieces and really stupid, fun, dumb things. So I love that balance, that mix of things.
I have sent really dumb requests. I just had a story today about every college football program's spending on balloons. Is that the hardest hitting thing? No. Are people going crazy for it online? Yes. I've also done really deep dives into local police departments relationships with universities.
I do genuinely think that journalism can be fun and interesting and I'm trying to sort of embody that with my site.
Is this something that's viable as a full-time venture for a journalist in 2025?
TBD. You'll have to ask me in a few months or a year. I do a free newsletter and I'm working on more paid offerings. I've definitely been able to get non-paid subscribers. It's definitely gotten good traction. My free stuff has self-developed a healthy readership and a healthy audience. Converting them to paid subscriptions is a much bigger challenge.
I've been lucky. New York City has this great mentorship program where if you start a small business, you can get a mentor for free.
And I was paired with a guy who used to work as a magazine publisher. He doesn't give a crap about content. He's 'I don't care what you report, you need to sell it.' And so I've been learning a lot about selling your own work, marketing your own work. subscriber acquisition, subscriber retention.
It's a part of the business that I did not care about when I was working for another company. They specifically silo off business and editorial sides for good reasons. Business interests shouldn't affect the newspaper, but I think in a way that also does a disservice to journalists.
I didn't necessarily care what our CPM was. I didn't even know what it stands for. So I would encourage young journalists to learn as much as they can about the business side of it, because at some point you're probably gonna be on your own and you're probably gonna have to do that.
And that's just skills and knowledge you can bank. Is it viable? I hope so. It's an arduous process. It just means there's no magic bullet where you're gonna suddenly get 600 new paid subscribers. You have to work for it. You have to earn every single one. You have to earn the respect, the trust, and then the wallet of your reader. And that just takes time.
In 2025 we had a new episode each week and featured more than 60 guests. I don’t know that we were the most diverse journalist interviews podcast out there, but we certainly tried to be.
We look forward to bringing you more journalist interviews in 2026 but we can use your help. Tell a friend, a relative, a colleague about us and let them know that our episodes are worth their time.
A reminder to professors and teachers
You can find episode guides that you can use if you wish to integrate the podcast within your classroom. There are more than 50 available. Each one has suggested questions for discussion and activities a class can do.
I’m also happy to help you find an episode that would be appropriate for what you’re teaching. Reach out to me at [email protected].
Additionally, I’ve curated some of the 2025 episodes into groups. If you’re teaching a class or unit in any of these subjects:
- Investigative Journalism
- Feature Writing
- Covering government policy
- Social justice, immigration, and identity
- Local News
Check out the sets of episode guides that would be useful to you. I don’t have a good term for them, so I’m borrowing from Bluesky and calling them “Starter Packs” - sets of 5-8 episodes in each category that may be useful in your classroom.