In a season of cutbacks, Seattle Times reporter Christine Willmsen was surprised to see the state government proposing a budget increase.

"I noted an add-on of an addition of over $20 million, and I thought that was odd," Willmsen said.

The budget listed a line item increase for civil commitment, which is a program that allows the state to detain sexually violent predators indefinitely. It also mentioned a Washington State Supreme Court decision that would require annual civil commitment trials for violent sexual offenders. This would give the sexual offenders more opportunities to ...

Social media can be an individual’s nightmare and a reporter’s goldmine. In “Disability pensions allow some firefighters to collect while working elsewhere,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch’s reporters used an array of investigative tools to publicize a mismanaged disability pension system that is eating away the city’s funds.

But even when firefighters are capable of moderately heavy workloads, doctors will recommend they retire. Pvt. Romondo Battle, a three-year firefighter, injured his back while fighting a fire in 2008. Two months after surgery, his doctor found Battle could shoulder "medium-heavy" to "heavy" physical work ...

By Hilary Niles
@nilesmedia

When you think of a company, don’t think of something with a physical presence, like a storefront or a corporate headquarters. That’s just not how companies are organized these days, said Chris Taggart of OpenCorporates.org. And in many cases, he said, there’s simply no single entity that encompasses all of a corporation’s holdings.

Taggart detailed the power of OpenCorporates during "Data for business investigations" with Thomson Reuters CAR editor Maurice Tamman.

Instead, think of a company as a creation of someone’s mind. Rather than occupying a body (or a building ...

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 ...