Archive for November 2009
Resource Highlights: Covering the Military
IRE has compiled some resources that may assist in covering the fatal shootings that occured today at Ft. Hood in Texas. If you have other resources that could be of help to your fellow reporters, please feel free to contact us, and we can add it to the list. (Email the IRE Resource Center, rescntr@ire.org.)…
Read MoreEducation, Inc. series
A three-day series by The Journal Gazette (Fort Wayne, Ind.) examined the local charter schools run by national, for-profit Imagine Schools Inc., the largest charter school management company in the nation. The series found that the idea of local, independent control – demanded by IRS rules governing non-profits – is non-existent, as the hired management…
Read MoreFelon awarded $1 million to supply AIDS/HIV services
In the third part of “Wasting Away,” an investigation of D.C.’s AIDS program,The Washington Post found the city awarded a $1 million AIDS contract to a woman who had just been convicted in federal court for a mortgage fraud scheme that bilked lenders out of hundreds of thousands of dollars. Over three years, the city…
Read MoreJobs linked to aircraft production complicate attempted budget cuts
The Boeing C-17 is a $250 million aircraft used by the military to transport troops and supplies. Despite the Pentagon asserting it has plenty of C-17s in its fleet, Congress continues to approve funding for additional planes, according to a report by Ben Elgin and Keith Epstein of BusinessWeek. The 2010 budget has $2.5 billion…
Read MoreGambling with state pension plan may cost state jobs, services
Mackenzie Ryan of the Statesman Journal (Salem, Ore.) recently investigated a new and controversial financial strategy in Oregon that attempts to lower a public agency’s pension system. The arbitrage strategy – where cities, school districts and the state issued bonds and then invested the money – made pension costs more volatile because “an agency’s pension…
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