Archive for October 2008
Campaigns benefiting from large donors
The latest campaign finance disclosures point to a proliferation of large donors supporting candidates and their parties and much of that money is coming from donors with interests in Washington, according to a report by Michael Luo and Griff Palmer of The New York Times. Fine print in campaign finance laws allow for larger donations…
Read MorePollution credits profitable for landfills
Jeffrey Ball of the Wall Street Journal reports that landfills all over the country may be capitalizing off the sale of carbon credits for environmental initiatives they already had in place. A pollution credit allows a company to offset their own “carbon footprint” by purchasing credits earned by others for their green initiatives. “The credit…
Read MoreQuick-hit CAR success
Little more than a week after enduring days of spreadsheet and database training, recent graduates of IRE’s Boot Camp in Minneapolis have produced quick-hit stories with their new computer-assisted reporting skills. An analysis by Jason Hoppin of The Pioneer Press found new voter registrations in Minnesota have pushed that state’s registrations to an all-time high.…
Read MoreTobacco Underground series
A six-part investigative series by The Center for Public Integrity’s International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) details the booming global trade in illegal cigarettes. Since 1999, the ICIJ has tracked the illegal tobacco trade, and found corporate collusion with the criminal networks diverting tobacco shipments to black markets around the world. Crackdowns starting in 2004…
Read MoreKnow Parking Here series
A project by CTV-British Columbia and ESRI Canada mapped parking ticket trends in Vancouver. Through a freedom of information request, CTV received digital copies of all the parking tickets issued during a two-week period and analysed the information to determine numerous trends including spikes in ticketing at certain points in the day and neighborhoods where…
Read MoreLAPD paying too much in overtime
Jason Kandel of the Los Angeles Daily News reports that overtime pay for Los Angeles police officers has increased almost 150 percent in the past decade. According to department records, the LAPD has spent more than its allotted overtime budget by an average of nearly $6 million a year since 2002-03. The report comes on…
Read MoreHidden wells, dirty water
An investigation by Leah Beth Ward of the Yakima Herald-Republic (Yakima, Wash.) reveals that evidence of area groundwater contamination has long been ignored. “A little noticed scientific study six years ago found that one in five of 195 wells tested outside five Lower Valley communities contained levels of nitrates above federal safety limits…Responsibility for keeping…
Read MoreRefugee programs struggle under increasing demand
The Salt Lake Tribune looked at the federal resettlement system that provides financial and social support for refugees relocating in Utah and throughout the U.S. The Tribune found the system quickly abandons refugees soon after their arrival. People coming from poor African nations and some parts of Asia, particularly those who have lived for a…
Read MorePrecision Journalism 101
Listen to Steve Doig, Knight Chair in Journalism at Arizona State University, and Philip Meyer, recently retired Knight Chair at the University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill, discuss the past and future of precision journalism. They share examples of how social science techniques and advances in personal computing have given journalists the tools to…
Read MoreDNA exonerations highlight flaws in eyewitness identifications
The Dallas Morning News spent months looking at Dallas County’s 19 DNA exonerations as well as current felony cases in an investigation that highlights flaws in the witness identification process. Despite known problems with eyewitness testimony, police and prosecutors still rely upon it to secure convictions. “The fallibility of eyewitness testimony revealed by DNA exonerations…
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