Not having access to the list of firms disqualified from the Service-Disabled Veteran-Owned Small Business program didn’t stop Dayton Daily News reporters from determining which companies were debarred from government contracts or from identifying some of the companies under investigation or disqualified from the program.

The article, “’Rent-a-vet’ scam proves costly to taxpayers, businesses,” gives readers a comprehensive look at the problems of the Service-Disabled Veteran-Owned Small Business program and a specific look at businesses operating in Ohio.

Government watchdogs say hundreds of millions of dollars in public funds have gone to ineligible companies under the program, which calls ...

In California Watch’s series Broken Shield, Ryan Gabrielson uncovered abuse and unknown injury cases at developmental centers that weren’t reported to the local police or district attorneys’ offices. 

Despite a number of condemning reports and a decreasing patient population, the number of abuse and unknown injury cases increased from 2008 to 2010 at developmental centers, which are state-run homes for people with developmental disabilities, such as autism and cerebral palsy.

Throughout Gabrielson's investigation, the California Department of Public Health, which monitors the developmental centers’ oversight department, the Department of ...

By Mayra Cruz
@MayraC27

One way to get around bureaucratic hassles is to get the to the data directly by scraping it off the Web.

The fight for public records can sometimes be avoided by taking the data directly from websites, Dan Nguyen of ProPublica said.

On Saturday, Nguyen led a hands-on class of “Web Inspector,” which refers to a Google Chrome add-on that allows non-programmers to obtain information posted online. Using it can help familiarize journalists with HTML by recognizing patterns in Web coding.

Getting familiar with HTML markup language may be daunting, but Web inspector can help reporters ...

By Hilary Niles
@nilesmedia

Spain is an “information black hole,” journalist Mar Cabra said during the Against All -Spanish- Odds. She and software developer David Cabo are taking suggestions on how to fix that. 

Among the European countries with a population more than 1 million, Cabra said, Spain is the only one not to have freedom of information laws. On the technical side, David Cabo described what this looks like for people working with data (if they can get it):

1. Administrations love PDF files and generally refuse to hand over raw data, text or Excel files
2. There is little consistency ...

Memorizing test questions and passing them on to future test takers is considered cheating by most people. However, for many radiologists, attempting to become board certified, it is simply a technique used to study. CNN's "Exclusive: Doctors cheated on exams" takes a close look:

"From my understanding, I would say nationwide from my friends across the country who are all in the same stages of training throughout the years, everyone gets a group. People decided beforehand what sections I will focus on, in terms of trying to recall those questions and answers," said Dr. John Yoo, a practicing radiologist ...

In "Problems plague cleanup at Hanford nuclear waste site," USA Today’s Peter Eisler takes on 56 million gallons of radioactive waste and finds he isn’t the only one who has a few things to learn. After 10 years of developing the “first-of-its-kind” nuclear waste treatment plant, the Department of Energy and its contractors still don’t know how to build it.

Project costs tripled to $12.3 billion and the start-up date was moved to 2019 from 2011, Eisler reported.

By using in-depth interviews and federal employees' documented concerns over "technical problems," Eisler was able to relay to ...

It was an unbelievable record for anyone, let alone a public employee. The Sarasota Herald-Tribune reported that one Opa-Locka, Fla., officer had been:

“Fired five times and arrested three, he was charged with stealing a car, trying to board an airplane with a loaded gun and driving with a suspended license.…(He) split a man's lip with a head butt. He opened another man's head with a leg sweep and takedown. He spit in the face of a drunken, stumbling arrestee. One time, he smacked a juvenile so hard the boy's face was red and swollen the ...

Journalists and journalism advocates rightly focus a great deal of energy on freedom of information law, defending the rights of the press and public to access governmental information. Attempts to control the press through legal means constitute a daily threat to democracy and must be met with systemic pushback.

Not all controls on information flow are legal, however. Indeed, non-legal controls, in the form of organized disinformation campaigns clothed as righteous indignation by institutions that find themselves in the crosshairs of investigative journalists, have become a growing problem.

It’s a timeworn tactic: an investigative series is quickly followed by ...

By Doug Haddix, IRE training director

A public records request for e-mails sometimes can produce quick-turn watchdog stories with powerful results. Take the experience of John Russell, a business reporter for The Indianapolis Star. Russell sharpened his investigative skills during a two-day IRE watchdog boot camp in Nashville for Gannett employees. The training was one of three IRE boot camps for employees of the newspaper chain.

Russell put his training to use covering an ethics scandal over the revolving door between Duke Energy Indiana and state regulators. After the governor fired the chairman of the Indiana Utilities Regulatory Commission, Russell ...