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 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 ...

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 ...

(Editor's Note: This is Part 2 of our "Behind the Story" look at coverage of the Hanford nuclear reservation's environmental issues.)

Determining when an ongoing issue becomes an issue worth investigating isn’t always easy.

Craig Welch, an environmental reporter for The Seattle Times who juggles topics from oceans to forests, also keeps his eye on the Hanford nuclear reservation, which had become, as one of his stories stated, an "atomic mess after 40 years of bomb-making."  

In Welch’s investigative stories "Big cleanup questions still loom at Hanford" and "Will ...

Hundreds of attendees and dozens of speakers descended on St. Louis for the 2012 Computer-Assisted Reporting Conference, for a weekend packed with data analysis, web development, other sessions, and a panda costume.

We had a full team of students attending and blogging about panels throughout the conference. In all, the bloggers covered dozens of sessions, on topics ranging from web scraping to best data visualization practices to how to find stories in data. Those blog posts are archived at the CAR Conference Blog.

Tipsheets for all sessions are currently being collected and added to the system, and will soon be ...

By Anna Boiko-Weyrauch
@AnnaBoikoW

"Hacking the Census" was a collection of lightning talks on tools, tricks and codes to hack the Census and American Community Survey, ranging from introductory to advanced.

Steve Doig, professor at Arizona State University, said the Census has information about people and households, of course, but there’s also info on business, education, foreign trade, and more. The McCormick SRI project gathered speakers and taped 17 lectures of 45 minutes where each expert addressed these different facets of the data.

Ron Campbell of The Orange County Register demonstrated how to use the New American FactFinder, the ...

IRE will be collecting tipsheets from the conference and storing them in the Resource Center for members to search and download. Chrys Wu, a journalist and engagement editor, is collecting online resources from the conference, as she did during the 2011 CAR Conference. Here is the beginning of her online post:

One of the most popular posts on Ricochet was the collection of dataviz tools, slides and links from last year’s NICAR conference.

It was so popular, in fact, that people have asked me to make a similar collection again. So from Feb. 23–26, I’ll be updating ...

More than 100 panels, demos and hands-on training sessions will be offered at the 2012 Computer-Assisted Reporting Conference. From the basics of data analysis using Excel and Access to editing a news app and mining unstructured text for stories, this year’s conference has panels for all skill levels of data journalists, as well as general panels for working with data on a variety of beats.

Early registration has ended, but on-site registration will be available Wednesday evening through Saturday. If this is your first conference, don’t be overwhelmed by the number of panels. The sessions are geared toward ...

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 ...