The Oklahoma State Capital
Writes for this publication
Jason W. Murphey
Writer
Covers Public Affairs and the City Desk
23 published news stories for this publication
About
In the early days of the Internet, in 1999, Jason Murphey began attending every city council meeting in his hometown of Guthrie, taking detailed notes. By early 2000, he had turned those notes into GuthrieCouncil.com, an independently produced website carrying council reports, photographs, the city charter, and an organizational map of city government. The Daily Oklahoman profiled the project under the headline "Resident puts council on Internet" at a time when online civic publishing was still novel and internet access remained far from ubiquitous.
Murphey's site was a predecessor to The Oklahoma State Capital, both technologically and editorially. It began with information that was public in theory but difficult to obtain in practice, then organized, explained, and placed it directly before readers.
The interests of openness and transparency led Murphey into public office and defined his public service role: four years on the Guthrie City Council, where he led the successful effort to broadcast city council meetings to the public, and 12 years in the Oklahoma House of Representatives, representing House District 31 from 2006 through 2018, where he chaired the House's initial Government Modernization effort, a standing committee created to improve government transparency and efficiency.
Those years gave Murphey an unusual vantage point from which to write about Oklahoma politics and policy. He examines votes and legislative procedure, follows money and institutional influence, recovers revealing details from minutes and public records, and translates the machinery of government into plain language.
Through OSC, Murphey continues the same project he began in Guthrie more than two decades ago: using independent online publishing to make government more visible and citizens more capable of judging it. The scale is now statewide, and the tools are more sophisticated, but the purpose remains consistent. Murphey's story is therefore not simply that of a former officeholder who became a writer; it is the story of a writer and civic publisher whose work carried him into public office and then back to the page, where he continues to chronicle Oklahoma's political life and build practical tools for accountability.
From the archive
How to reach Jason
- Office
- (405) 260-9966 Ext. 7.
- On X
- JWMurphey
What Jason is working on
Reporting in progress. If you know something about any of it, the contacts above reach Jason directly.
- Logan County campaign finance Where outside money in the 2024 commissioner race came from.
Published news reporting
The 20 most recent of 23.
What our reporters do, and do not do
- They identify themselves as reporting for The Oklahoma State Capital before they interview you, and they tell you what the story is about.
- They do not pay for interviews, and they do not accept payment, gifts or hospitality in exchange for coverage.
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- They will agree to ground rules — on the record, on background, off the record — before you speak, not after, and this publication writes those terms down.
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If somebody claiming to write for this publication does otherwise, that is worth telling us about. Ring (405) 260-9966 and ask for an editor, or write to editor@oklahomastatecapital.com. Our full standards are set out in our creed.
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