Online realm is a new way of telling The Story

Gavin Sheridan and Mark Coughlan are chiefly responsible for The Story, a website "dedicated to combining data and promoting transparency" in Irish public life. The blog is updated several times a day most days and mixes reports and information from other sources with its on FOI requests.

The site follows through on its promise to "promote" transparency. Not only do its operators send Freedom of Information requests, last December Mark Coughlan offered to fund requests that DCU students wanted to send for publication on the website. It does this through donations it receives, and it has so far received over €2,600 from donors. As the price of FOI requests can run into the hundreds, this is particularly useful.

On April 19, Gavin Sheridan wrote what he said on Twitter was "probably my most important post on The Story to date". An FOI request on Anglo-Irish Bank was rejected on the grounds that it was not a public authority and that the request itself was too large. An internal review agreed, and Sheridan is now waiting the result of an appeal. It has the potential to create a very interesting public debate - should a private enterprise that has received billions of public support and which has been nationalised be open to public scrutiny through FOI requests? This agenda-setting potential is what online journalism is doing more and more frequently.