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(15 de julio de 2025) — La asociación Investigative Reporters and Editors (Reporteros y Editores de Investigación) ha otorgado la Medalla Don Bolles de 2025 a Rocío Gallegos, directora editorial y co-fundadora del portal de noticias de investigación La Verdad que ella ayudó a formar en 2018 con el fin de combatir la censura y el control de información del gobierno de México dirigidos a medios locales de noticias.
Gallegos ha informado valientemente en la frontera entre Estados Unidos y México desde 1994, exponiendo la corrupción gubernamental y el impacto de la narcopolítica, incluyendo su labor para revelar la verdad detrás de los asesinatos de otros dos periodistas.
Pasó los primeros años de su carrera en El Diario y co-fundó la Red de Periodistas de Juárez en 2011 como una forma de que los periodistas locales se apoyaran y protegieran mutuamente. Esa asociación se convirtió en La Verdad después de que quedó claro que el gobierno estaba presionando con éxito a los medios de comunicación establecidos para que suprimieran las historias.
Publican con gran riesgo para su propia seguridad y la de sus familias, pero quedarse callada no es una opción, dijo Gallegos.
“Es muy difícil de explicar, y es muy difícil de entender, pero hay mucha información que tiene que hacerse pública”, dijo Gallegos. “La información tiene que hacerse pública para que ocurra el cambio, un cambio para nuestra comunidad y también para nuestras familias”.
“Elegimos informa”, dijo Gallegos. “Elegimos informar independientemente del riesgo”.
La Medalla Don Bolles reconoce a periodistas de investigación que han demostrado extraordinaria valentía al enfrentar la intimidación o los esfuerzos para suprimir la verdad sobre temas de suma importancia para el público.
Por su ejemplaridad, por su liderazgo y su compromiso con su labor periodística, IRE seleccionó a Gallegos para recibir la Medalla Don Bolles de 2025.
“Ella representa la valentía, a veces invisible, de periodistas locales que cubren temas de inmigración, la violencia fronteriza y los fallos institucionales. Contrario a organizaciones que cuentan con mayores recursos o periodistas de alto perfil, ella opera en un aislamiento relativo y bajo una amenaza continua”, dijo Pelin Unker, miembro del comité de selección que previamente fue honrada con una Medalla Don Bolles.
El comité de siete personas que otorga la Medalla Don Bolles incluye a tres otros profesionales previamente galardonados con la misma: Roman Badanin, Jeremy Jojola y Eric Meyer. El resto del comité fue compuesto por aguerrido reporteros Kaela Malig, John Ferrugia y AmyJo Brown.
“Es una increíble muestra de entereza realizar este tipo de labor cuando conlleva tantos riesgos personales”, dijo Brown, presidenta del comité. “Y son periodistas locales de la talla de Rocío a quienes necesitamos para que aquellos que están en el poder rindan cuentas”.
“En estos tiempos de amenazas crecientes y rendición de cuentas en retroceso, su ejemplo nos recuerda lo que significa el verdadero coraje”, dijo la directora ejecutiva de IRE, Diana Fuentes. “Hoy lo necesitamos más que nunca.”
La Medalla Don Bolles fue creada en 2017, de la mano del 40º aniversario del Arizona Project, un esfuerzo liderado por IRE para terminar el trabajo de Bolles. En represalia por sus reportajes, el periodista de investigación del rotativo The Arizona Republic fue asesinado en 1976 por una bomba que explotó en su coche.
La muerte de Bolles ocurrió unos días antes de la primera conferencia nacional de IRE, en Indianápolis, donde el aguerrido reportero estaba programado participar en un panel. En ese momento, Bolles había estado investigando alegaciones de fraude inmobiliario que involucraban a políticos prominentes e individuos con vínculos al crimen organizado.
Tras su muerte, casi 40 periodistas estadounidenses hicieron acto de presencia en Arizona para completar las investigaciones de Bolles. Organizaciones periodísticas a lo largo y ancho del país publicaron los reportajes que resultaron.
Su mensaje fue claro: Los esfuerzos para suprimir la verdad serán enfrentados por esfuerzos aún mayores por parte del gremio periodístico para que la verdad salga a la luz. La muerte del periodista no fue la muerte de su trabajo.
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IRE es una organización sin fines de lucro, de base comunitaria, que capacita a periodistas de todos los niveles en habilidades de análisis de datos, así como en técnicas de reporteo y redacción investigativa.
Para entrenamientos accesibles y personalizados, en inglés, español o en formato bilingüe, visite nuestro sitio web o envíe un correo electrónico a Laura Moscoso a la dirección laura@ire.org.
Estamos para servirles.
Editor’s note: Legendary journalist James B. Steele was one of the first to join IRE after it started in 1975 and has stayed active throughout the years in the organization, serving as a mentor for countless young journalists and participating in dozens of conference sessions, among other roles. A former contributing editor at Vanity Fair, editor-at-large at Time magazine and reporter at The Philadelphia Inquirer, Steele and his longtime reporting partner, the late Don Barlett, won two Pulitzer prizes and dozens of other awards for their comprehensive data analysis and investigations into wide-ranging public issues. They also wrote nine books, including two NYT bestsellers. Steele teaches at Temple University.
On June 21, 2025, Steele delivered a no-holds-barred, deeply stirring keynote speech at the IRE25 Awards Luncheon in New Orleans, celebrating the organization’s 50th anniversary. This is a complete, unredacted version of his address.
I can't begin to tell you how honored I am to be with you today, to be a part of this great occasion.
I not only feel honored, but I also feel lucky.
Lucky … because long ago when I was starting out I didn't take some advice from one of my elders.
It was in my first few weeks as a reporter for the Kansas City Star. I’d gotten the job in my first year of college, went to school during the day, worked nights at the paper, writing mostly small stuff in the beginning — death notices, fires, car crashes.
One night, after I’d been there a few weeks, one of the copy editors pulled up a chair next to my desk and began to go through a small story I had written. He eliminated the word here, inserted a word there. Nothing major. He then put the story down and looked me in the eye and said,
“Jimmy — you're doing good work.
“But get out while you can.”
Well as you can see I didn't take that advice.
I was already hooked.
Talking to people. Being around police. Watching firemen brave a big fire. Spending time with bereaved families who’d lost a loved one.
All those currents that make us human spoke to me.
I knew what I wanted to do.
But what I faced that moment is something I suspect many of us go through at one time or another.
Do we stay or do we go …
Are the obstacles we face worth overcoming?
What is our future in this field?
What is the future of the field itself?
The challenges change from era to era.
But the question is almost always there: Do we stay or leave.
It’s a personal decision, of course.
But overall the answer for many of us is pretty clear judging by what I see here:
We stay.
We’re in this because there are stories that need to be told
We’re in this because we hope our work will be seen for what it is — in the public interest.
We’re in this because deep down we’re driven by a sense of outrage when fairness is violated by those with money and power who have the wherewithal to run roughshod over everyone else to have their own way.
I think all of us are bound together by a universal truth: that journalism — especially investigative journalism — is a calling.
Yes … a Calling.
And never more so than today.
So I stayed and I learned some valuable lessons.
I want to tell you about one of them because it’s stayed with me ever since.
It’s summed up in 2 words: Never assume
I learned it the hard way. After I’d been a reporter for a few weeks, I came to work late one afternoon, took my seat at my desk and soon after I heard the booming voice of the city editor on the loudspeaker:
“Mr. Steele approach the desk. “
All of us lived in fear of hearing those words because we knew he wasn’t going to say:
“Great story yesterday Jim.”
So I approached the desk with sweat running down my spine. He turned around in his chair and asked me. “Steele: How did Mr. Smith spell his name?” I thought Uh-oh .
So I spelled “S-M-I-T-H.”
“Well that's the way you spelled it, but that's not the way Mr. Smith spelled it.”
From that painful experience to never assume how to spell someone’s name — even the most common of names — I learned over the years that there were a lot of other things that you should never assume if you’re a reporter.
Never assume where you’ll find a document.
Never assume what you’ll find in the document, even if it’s been previously written about.
Never assume if a government official or private individual tells you that a report doesn’t exist — that it really doesn’t exist.
Never assume that you know everything to know about the subject you’re reporting.
And lastly, never assume who will or will not talk to you.
I learned a lot of the basics in that first job.
But you know what I didn't learn? I learned nothing about investigative reporting. And you know why? Because the paper did almost no investigative reporting.
And that wasn’t unusual for the time. Hard as it is for us to believe — assembled together in this great gathering here — there was a time when there was very little investigative reporting in this country.
And what little was done was very often narrowly defined.
I heard this later from veterans that often when an investigative story was proposed, the editor’s first question was something like:
Has a law been broken? What crime has been committed?
If you couldn’t cite something illegal, many editors just weren’t interested.
It just wasn’t considered investigative.
Thankfully, that narrow definition is now history.
Investigative reporting still exposes criminal activity, but now also takes on a broader range of destructive acts by government and private interests that — while unethical and harmful — are quite often perfectly legal even though they sometimes wreak havoc and inflict pain on the lives of millions of people.
The definition began to change during the Vietnam War. The contrast between the tragic, bloody battles in the field as reported by Neil Sheehan and David Halberstam versus the rosy accounts by generals in Washington of how well the war was going exposed the fallacies of American policy, and helped trigger the modern era of investigative reporting.
We began to see how government was lying to us and wasn’t serving the interests of its citizens.
And it was falling to journalists — those reporters in the field — to hold government accountable.
*
One of the earliest investigations that Don Barlett and I did would reflect this approach, though we didn’t realize it at the time..
In 1972, we looked at 1,000 cases of violent crime in Philadelphia to see how justice was being served. The great Phil Meyer saved us by writing a brilliant program that let us analyze this massive amount of data we had collected to see exactly how judges and prosecutors were dealing with cases of murder, robbery, rape and other violent crimes.
It exposed everything from racism to the fickle nature of how decisions were handed down. There was nothing illegal there — just some bad decisions affecting victims and defendants alike, raising questions of fairness and painting a picture of a malfunctioning court system.
But here's why I’m telling this story. Something happened after that series that shows as much as anything I could tell you how far investigative journalism has come to embrace new techniques and approaches, and to be where we are today.
The series won some national awards including one from the American Bar Association, some of whose members we’d raked over the coals.
But it hit a stone wall in the Pulitzer judging. We heard later from one of our editors at The Inquirer that during the judging one juror or board member — I can't remember which at this point — said any article that used a computer in telling a story would win a Pulitzer over his dead body.
Does this tell you far we’ve come?
The use of documents and data has been a huge transformation in our craft that’s made our work more sophisticated, scientific if you will.
Look at the winners in any awards contests today and their influence is self-evident.
This didn’t happen overnight. But the change is momentous.
Investigative reporting didn’t abandon our commitment to expose corruption and criminal behavior which will always be a thriving business in America.
We just added to the ledger by broadening out the definition to show a range of stories of how the public was being ill served.
Stories on programs and policies that were … all perfectly legal.
IRE …. has been at the center of this.
Since we’re celebrating our 50th anniversary this weekend., come back with me to that first convention.
Three hundred of us were packed into a hotel in Indianapolis.
There was tremendous excitement.
We sensed it was a new era.
When I heard I’d be with you today, I went searching and found my file from that first convention.
Yeah. Here it is. (Editor’s note: Steele pulls out thick manila folder stuffed with papers)
Don Barlett and I were subjected to a lot of good-natured ribbing because we seemed to save every scrap of paper.
Our work spaces always looked like they’d just been hit by an earthquake with papers piled high on desks, windowsills, shelves — everywhere.
When Don and I left The Inquirer in Philadelphia to work for Time magazine in New York, TIME generously offered — before it realized what it was getting into — to move all our files to New York.
Well, we’re talking about hundreds of boxes.
Shortly before the actual move a TIME editor called to give us an update on the move.
He said work on our office had been delayed because they were having to reinforce the 45th floor of the TIME-LIFE Building because of our files.
When I looked at my ’76 file, what a revelation. Of the 300 who attended, most were males — white males I should add.
One of the great exceptions to that of course was the amazing Myrta Pulliam, to whom every one of us here owe a debt of gratitude, as one of the primary driving, visionary forces who created IRE.
Like journalism itself, the entry of women and minorities into investigative journalism has been one of the greatest and most positive changes in our craft over the years, making us more reflective and representative of the world we write about.
The panel I chaired in ’76 was called “Precision Journalism,” a name taken from the title of Phil Meyer’s path breaking book of a couple of years before that forecast in startling clarity the future of data journalism to come.
I started with this:
“So much journalism just flies by the seat of its pants. There's no systematic effort to verify information fed to us by governments, corporations, or other interests. We need to develop our own data to evaluate how these institutions are functioning so we can transcend the limitations we face now.”
After that, my panel and others I attended that year were about the nuts and bolts of reporting:
In other words, that first convention was pretty much like the ones we’ve come to expect year in and year out.
The goal was always how — how — do we do the work.
There are always new issues, of course, new technologies, new challenges.
But the bottom line remains: How do we do the work?
From my perspective, this is a straight line with IRE, something that was baked into our DNA from day one.
Similarly the first IRE awards reflect another constant through the years.
Those first winning entries dealt with investigations on toxic substances, threats to the environment, misspent government funds and immigration. Some of this year’s winners include similar subjects, down to and including immigration.
The message out of this for me is clear:
Our work is never done.
Just because something is exposed one year doesn’t mean it’s been corrected or that the reform of the moment is permanent.
One of the most frequent frustrations I’ve heard from reporters over the years is the hollow feeling they get after one of their projects produces no results.
They say, “I worked my tail off. I had the goods on what had gone wrong. There was a huge public outcry. But nothing changed to correct the injustice.”
Folks … I’ve been there.
I know how that feels.
All I can tell you is that the response is beyond us.
That’s another department.
But you’ve made a great contribution to public knowledge of the problem.
And who knows
… down the road …
Something might change.
In any event it’s beyond your power. You did what you could.
You did the work.
IRE gatherings like this — in addition to showing us new tools and techniques — give us something else which to me is of equal — maybe of even greater — value.
When we’re here, we’re reminded that we’re not alone in this work.
Investigative reporting — even when working with a partner — is often solitary work.
Filled with unexpected failures, frustrating dead ends and plenty of dry holes.
I don’t know about you, but for me sometimes in an investigation when things aren’t going right … it can feel like you’re trying to push string uphill.
But at panels and in the halls, where we share experiences, we realize that whatever we’re going through isn’t unique to us.
What may have stymied us … sn’t because of some failing of our own.
It’s because … this work is just very hard, and it doesn’t move in a straight line.
That’s the territory.
And that’s why IRE — the camaraderie, the shared experiences, the bonding — has been so important through the years for generations of us.
It’s the opposite of what I remember as a young reporter when sometimes the guy at the next desk wouldn’t tell you what he was working on.
IRE has fostered a culture of collaboration, shared values, and exchange of ideas.
If IRE had a motto it could easily be “How can I help you do your job?”
So we let each other know that we’re not alone.
And that we need each other.
We may need each other more than ever in the days ahead.
Even though the work of IRE members deals mostly with local or regional Issues, the incessant attacks on the press by Trump and his supporters have unsettled us all and threaten to throw a chill over all our work.
It’s called into question the work we do to a greater degree than anything I can ever remember …
… .questioning the very legitimacy of our profession and its historical, constitutionally-enshrined protection.
We're used to making people feel uncomfortable or to be the object of a lot of criticism for what we’ve aired or written.
People saying we got the story wrong, or half right or was biased …
But this is way beyond that.
You may recall that the Washington Post tabulated that Trump in his first term made over 30,000 lies or misleading statements.
My bet is he will easily top that one in round two.
Making matters worse, we’re seeing that many other politicians and government officials are repeating those lies misleading the public, to curry favor with Trump and to enhance their own power.
I could spend my whole time here reciting those lies, fabrications and tall tales but you know about them. They’re so blatant.
Stories that in the past would have been so patently false and dismissed now get some credence.
It’s not easy to counteract this.
Wasn’t it Mark Twain who supposedly said, “A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes.”
So our job of presenting the news is more challenging than ever.
But I submit to you that facts — facts — are still important.
You can express all the opinion in the world but facts are the real power.
Unless we have the facts to support an opinion, the opinion only goes so far.
Don Barlett and I found that repeatedly over the years.
One could write as we did that Congress had passed a tax law riddled with favors for special interests. But what gave this story power was to quote those specific giveaways.
In a reform tax law, Congress outlawed some flagrant tax shelters in the Caribbean. That was the right thing to do.
But then — guess what? Congress did the wrong thing and inserted scads of provisions exempting people and companies from the reforms.
After lambasting evil tax shelters, Congress then inserted this paragraph:
“EXCEPTION: (The above section B 2) Shall not apply to any income … by 1 or more corporations incorporated in Delaware on or about March 6, 1981 and which have owned 1 or more office buildings in St. Thomas, U.S. Virgin Islands for at least 5 years before the enactment of this act.”
Can you believe that’s actually in the law?
It was worth millions of dollars to a California businessman, and we found dozens of giveaways just like it.
Similarly in America: What Went Wrong, our 1991 work showing how Washington and Wall Street had colluded to erode the economic base of the middle class and create income inequality, we had numerous references on how Congress and moneyed interests were shafting average people.
But again what got to readers were the specifics like the paragraph that told how one corporate brigand was paying more for the upkeep of his dog than the pension he was paying to a 60-year-old factory worker he’d let go after she’d worked for him 30 years.
So Specifics. Nothing like them. Facts are the road to the truth.
I’m often asked where do ideas for stories come from?
And my answer is — they’re all around us.
The subject of virtually every major story Don Barlett and I did had appeared in limited fashion in the media.
So many great stories are like that — they’re just touched on and then not followed up.
The late John Carroll when he was editor of the Baltimore Sun noticed an item in the Sun about an old cargo ship being cut up for scrap.
Like the great reporter and editor he was, he was curious.
How often does that happen? What do they do with the scrap? Who does the work?
The result was a compelling expose of a shadowy global industry that nobody knew anything about that ignored environmental and safety standards endangering workers and civilians.
It won an IRE award, a Pulitzer prize and many other honors.
“America: What Went Wrong?”, probably the best known work Don Barlett and I did, had a similar, unspectacular origin. The media was filled at the time with stories about corporate takeovers and restructurings that were supposedly energizing and remaking the American economy.
Sure a few people were losing their jobs. But they’d get another job — the economy was so robust — we were told.
What we found, though, when we looked at individual companies and interviewed people who used to work for them, was that a whole class of people were seeing their earnings, their benefits — indeed — their way of life undercut by these drastic measures that were enriching guys on Wall Street but reducing the standard of living of middle class Americans.
So a story that began as an inquiry into the causes of corporate restructuring turned out to be a warning about the potential demise of the American middle class.
None of this work we do is easy, right?
But then we didn’t get into this work because it was easy.
I know that it’s especially difficult right now for young people coming out of college or who’ve entered the workforce in the last few years.
The chaos. The upheaval seems to be everywhere.
I wish I could tell you how all of this will play out but of course nobody knows that.
My guess is that much of the turmoil we see today will be chronic — just an ongoing fact of our lives.
I do know that investigative reporting will survive, just as journalism overall will survive.
Don’t ask me in what forms, though
It will survive because there is a deep-seated need in body politic for the kind of reporting that we do.
One of the most hopeful developments trying to meet this need is the rise of so many web-based nonprofit investigative sites at the local and regional level.
The Institute for Nonprofit News began almost 15 years ago with 25 members. Today it has more than 500. A substantial number are investigative and are trying to fill the gap left behind by the cutbacks or outright collapse of dailies and weeklies, almost all devoted to local and regional news.
I was generally aware of this but it wasn’t until I became a director of the Fund for Investigative Journalism that I came to fully appreciate the extent of these local and regional nonprofits and the vital role they are now playing in investigative reporting.
Most recently a Pulitzer went to one of these — the Baltimore Banner — in a collaboration with the NY Times.
At the Fund, we’re seeing a steady stream of excellent work that one might have seen in your local newspaper or tv station in the past.
Stories on prosecutorial misconduct, shootings of innocent civilians by police because of bogus claims the victims were criminals, failure of local authorities to monitor polluting landfills, covert efforts by deep-pocketed conservatives to take over local school boards, the practice of child welfare agencies routinely taking children away from their parents without due process, how oil and gas companies conceal the magnitude of their pollution discharges to create the false impression they are abiding by air quality standards.
So the messengers may be new today; but what is motivating the reporters who come to us for funding is same thing that has driven all of us for years:
A sense of outrage at how elected officials or other interests are not serving the public interest.
How they’re trampling on individual rights or polluting the land at will.
Or worse — inflicting pain and hardship on people who have no way to fight back.
When you do an investigation, think of the people..
Tell who’s getting hurt …
And tell who’s doing the hurting.
That contrast is one of the most powerful tools we have as investigative reporters so people understand why we do what we do.
To this day the people I remember the most from the stories Don and I did are the ones who got hurt.
Their stories are burned into my memory and soul.
People like Ed Bohl
Ed was a midlevel manager in a shoe plant in a little town in Missouri. He’d worked there his whole life, helped introduce the plant to new technologies, was treasured by fellow employees, neighbors and townspeople for his role in making the profitable little plant such a mainstay, model citizen and pivotal player in the town.
Then one day the plant’s new owners — money boys from New. York who’d borrowed a ton of money to buy the plant’s parent company — shut it down and sold the land to raise cash to cover their big loan. Ed lost his job, health care and half his pension when he took a low-paying job without benefits.
He had no bitterness, only a sense of loss, and bewilderment that a place — a country really — where he’d given so much and played by all the established rules could turn on him like that and change his life.
Or Joy Whitehouse, an ailing wisp of a woman in Utah whose truck driver husband was killed in a trucking accident and then saw his promised pension taken away by his company because of its own mismanagement, leaving her at the poverty line.
“How do you get by?” I asked her.
“I eat a lot of soup,” she said.
When all is said and done, people like them need to have their stories told.
A lot of things have changed
But those people reflect what we in journalism must always do as mirrored in that saying sometimes attributed to Joseph Pulitzer more than 100-plus years ago: “Comfort the Afflicted and Afflict the Comfortable.”
Increasingly nowadays the task of doing that will fall more and more on us.
Trump has axed Inspector Generals’ offices, watered down other enforcement bodies, and put fear into any institution that challenges him.
Americans are counting on us more than ever.
To tell these stories — human and otherwise — puts a lot on all our plates.
But fortunately we now have tools that we didn’t have in the past..
Our ability to access information — data and documents — down to and including people to interview — is breathtaking today — a tidal change from just a few years ago.
Here’s what I mean.
When Don and I were doing the research for “America: What Went Wrong?” we pulled together statistics about wealth and taxes that showed in shocking detail how wealthy Americans were profiting while average Americans were stuck in a rut with stagnant wages and declining benefits.
To get that data we copied decades of IRS’s Statistics of Income, the bible of tax and financial data going back decades. We spent hours in the public documents room of the Free Library of Philadelphia slowly, boringly photocopying those paper reports.
Just as an aside here — A Swedish journalist once wrote an unkind profile of us saying Barlett and Steele were about as exciting as watching paint dry.
But what are you going to do?
The truth always hurts, right?
We then extracted numbers from the copied reports and typed them manually into a spreadsheet program many of you younger folks here may well have never heard of called Lotus 1-2-3. It was a predecessor of Excel. That was the process that let us come up with some genuinely eye opening conclusions showing the drift toward ever greater income inequality in the U.S.
In 2020 we updated the book taking each major conclusion in the 1992 book to see what had changed.
For the tax data, rather than visiting my friends at the Library, I never had to leave my desk.
I downloaded all the necessary IRS tables from the IRS website. So what had taken weeks and weeks of work in the past now was accomplished in just a few hours.
Coming down the pike — actually it’s already here — is another game changer. I’m talking about AI.
We’re starting to see AI being used in ways we could only imagine in the past because of its potential to gather, analyze and summarize vast amounts of information.
The Pulitzer prizes this year took note of AI’s role in three entries — one a winner, two others finalists.
Marjorie Miller, the administrator, said the Pulitzer board sees responsible AI “as a significant component in the increasingly versatile toolkit utilized by today’s working journalists.”
AI isn’t perfect and will require fact checking as of old, but it is undoubtedly a tool that has a future in our work.
So, yes, we have some tools to do our work.
But there’s something more valuable than them.
And that’s you — all of you.
I wish you could see what I’m seeing right now.
This amazing assembly of dedicated journalists from all over.
Working in different mediums.
But all committed to doing what we do — in whatever lane is available to us.
We’re the accumulated result of an idea 50 years ago that is a reality today.
And I believe as surely as I’m standing here right now that somebody will be standing here 50 years from now to say what I’m saying.
Because our work is never done.
Our business may be in constant turmoil with old models crashing, new models forming.
But one thing hasn’t changed and never will.
We will never run out of stories to investigate.
How many professions can say that they’ll never run out of work?
And you know why?
America may be the land of the free but it’s also the home of the hustler, in business and in politics and other powerful institutions
And those people never go away in America.
Because the ability to make a fast buck by any means is almost enshrined in our system.
Our job is to hold them accountable in hopes of creating a more just and equal America that lives up to the promise of our country.
We know what needs to be done
And we know how to do it.
We also know that the road will be rocky
But we are disturbers of the peace
And we must never shirk from that duty.
So … do what we’ve always done:
Expose.
Shine a light.
Show what’s gone off the rails.
And speak — speak — for those who don’t have a voice
I wear a number of different hats these days.
I do some speaking and teaching and mentoring. I judge journalism contests and also serve on some nonprofit journalism boards, especially the Fund for Investigative Journalism that I mentioned earlier.
So I see a lot of what is happening both in this country and elsewhere, and I’m here to tell you that for all the turmoil, all the uncertainty, all the unknowns — all the multitude of threats leveled against us by the fake news purveyors which seem, if anything, even more vicious and wrongheaded than I can ever remember —
— well, I’m here to tell you that for all these challenges, the fire — the fire to tell the truth, to unmask the forces that undermine rule of law and make life harder for average people — those forces are as strong as ever.
I see it in newsroom veterans, I see it in mature reporters and I see it in young people entering the field.
As I said earlier, Journalism is a calling, and investigative journalism an even deeper calling because we antagonize the people in power who would prefer to run this country as a private club where average folks have no say … but pay the bills.
There’s nothing new about this behavior of the rich and powerful.
But that s where we come in —
Where we’ve always come in …
And — I submit to you — where we always will.
So I say to all of you, my friends and colleagues and newcomers to this great assembly: There may be setbacks, there may be reversals, we may find ourselves losing heart from time to time. But don’t give up.
What we do is fundamental to freedom both here and elsewhere.
So keep the faith.
And lastly, do the work.
(July 11, 2025) — Scott Pelley, the longtime and highly regarded correspondent for CBS’ 60 Minutes, will serve as master of ceremonies for the Investigative Reporters and Editors 50th Anniversary Gala this September.
Pelley, winner of 52 Emmy Awards, has garnered attention this year for his forceful defense of journalism in the face of attacks and pressure from the Trump Administration. In an interview with CNN’s Anderson Cooper last month, Pelley said journalism “is the only thing that’s going to save the country. You cannot have democracy without journalism. It can’t be done.”
Pelley has been a reporter at CBS for more than 35 years, and a correspondent for 60 Minutes since 1999. From 2011 to 2017, he also served as anchor of The CBS Evening News. He has also been publicly critical of CBS’ parent company, Paramount Global, for interfering with coverage and engaging in settlement talks with President Trump in a lawsuit Trump filed against CBS.
“Scott Pelley is the perfect person to emcee this special celebration of investigative journalism,” said Brian M. Rosenthal, IRE’s Board Chair and New York Times investigative reporter. “His outstanding career and courageous defense of our field have inspired many of us doing the work of journalism day in and day out.”
The 50th Anniversary Gala, the first such fundraiser in IRE’s history, will take place Sept. 15 at Gotham Hall in New York. Co-chairs of the event are Paul Sagan, chair of ProPublica; A.G. Sulzberger, publisher and chairman of The New York Times; and Judy Woodruff, senior correspondent, former anchor and managing editor of PBS News.
The 50th Anniversary Gala is a fundraiser, with tables starting at $10,000 and individual tickets at $1,500. Find more information here or send an email to Jill Vanzino at jvanzino@inezevents.com.
Funds raised will go toward the nonprofit organization’s training programs.
Among the honorees who will be recognized at the gala are Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein of Watergate fame; Julie K. Brown, the Miami Herald reporter who broke the Jeffrey Epstein scandal; and Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey, the New York Times reporters who uncovered the stories about Harvey Weinstein and workplace sexual harassment.
“These stars of journalism, who all received training at IRE, exemplify the power and future of journalism, the very foundation of democracy,” said IRE Executive Director Diana Fuentes. “We are proud to celebrate their contributions to our industry and look forward to a memorable evening reflecting the heart and soul and never-quit passion for truth we all share.”
(July 7, 2025) — Investigative Reporters and Editors is seeking volunteers to serve on several Committees and Task Forces.
These groups offer ideas and help us improve member services, expand IRE's reach, plan training events, organize regional meetups, and much more.
"The IRE Board is making it a priority to bring in new voices and new perspectives," said IRE Board President Josh Hinkle. "One of the best ways to ensure your voice is heard is to serve on a committee or task force, where the decision-making process begins."
Members across all categories, of all experience levels, are welcome to sign up. You just need to be a member of IRE and have a passion for helping your colleagues! Appointees serve for one year.
If you're interested, please fill out this Google form by Friday, July 25.
Have questions about signing up? We're hosting an informal virtual Q&A on Wednesday, July 16 at 1 p.m. ET. It's free to attend; just register to join the webinar. You can also reach out to president@ire.org.
This committee focuses on supporting student journalists and academic members, and enhancing investigative journalism education. It continues launching student chapters, sharing resources and developing initiatives to elevate student work within IRE.
This group works to address the financial barriers that may prevent journalists, particularly those from underrepresented communities, from fully participating in IRE's offerings.
This committee historically has had one job: It reviews the annual audit completed by an external certified public accounting firm. But the committee also has the power to otherwise oversee accountability of the organization however it sees fit.
This committee tackles conference-related issues, including the keynote and showcase panels for IRE, NICAR and AccessFest, as well as advising other panels and specific tracks. It also makes recommendations regarding conference affordability and other issues.
This committee judges the IRE Awards, makes recommendations for the rules for the awards and handles issues that arise with other contests like the Golden Padlock, Don Bolles Medal and Philip Meyer Award.
This committee works on initiatives to improve diversity and inclusion among IRE and its members.
This group will work to tackle employment instability and limited career advancement opportunities, aiming to support professional development.
This committee oversees the budget and the endowment accounts.
This group will work to strengthen fundraising strategies for IRE initiatives, with a focus on long-term sustainability and impact. The group will also help with coordinated giving campaigns to mobilize public financial support.
This committee scrutinizes IRE's organizational structure and makes proposals regarding various rules, policies and procedures.
This committee spearheads initiatives to address IRE member recruitment and retention and improve benefits, resources and services for members. It also helps organize local meetups and oversees IRE’s mentorship programs.
This group works to explore how to protect an independent press and access to public data – through a variety of training resources, events and partnerships.
This task force works on improving a new (soon-to-be-launched) IRE website. To accomplish this, the task force will be split into a technical group for ongoing resources work and a user group about how to make the new site better for members.
(July 7, 2025) — Investigative Reporters and Editors is pleased to announce the recipients of the 2025 Koch Continuum Grant, a new program supporting investigative journalists pursuing public health and disability reporting.
Eli Cahan and Ainsley Martinez have been selected for their ambitious project proposals looking into systemic discrimination at child protective services agencies, and the impacts of a nationwide crackdown on power wheelchair fraud.
Cahan is an award-winning investigative journalist whose reporting focuses on the intersection of child welfare and social justice. His work has been featured in The Washington Post, Rolling Stone , ABC and NPR, among other publications. A native of New York City, Cahan was shortlisted for the Livingston Award in 2025; he has also received reporting fellowships from the McGraw Center, the National Press Foundation, and the Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma, among others.
Cahan is also a pediatrician at Boston Children’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School. He holds degrees from the University of Michigan, Stanford University, and NYU School of Medicine.
His project will focus on how child protective services agencies are systematically discriminating against tens of thousands of parents with disabilities. Under the new administration, it may get even worse as executive actions against DEI threaten parents with disabilities.
Martinez is an editor and head of data visualizations at the Long Island Herald. As a reporter with a disability, she focuses primarily on accessibility reporting. An Oklahoma City native, Martinez previously reported for Oklahoma Watch, an investigative nonprofit, and the daily Oklahoman. She earned a bachelor’s degree in Professional Media from the University of Central Oklahoma, and a professional certification in data journalism and visualizations from Columbia Journalism School’s LEDE program.
Her project will focus on the consequences of “Operation Wheel Dealer,” a 2003 Medicare fraud controversy that prompted a nationwide crackdown on fraudulent claims for power wheelchairs. At the time, it was deemed the “fastest growing scam in Medicare.” More than two decades later, Martinez is now digging into the many legitimate claims for power wheelchairs being denied. Stricter policies have left people who rely on power wheelchairs to commute, like those in New York City, without proper coverage.
Cahan and Martinez will each receive a $10,000 grant, as well as financial assistance to present the results of their reporting at the 2026 IRE Conference in Washington, D.C.
Established in February through the generosity of a longtime IRE member, the goal of this program is to foster investigative reporting in the medical and public health fields. A veteran journalist and author specializing in medical and public health coverage, his hope is this program will serve others in the area of work he pursued for 25 years.
Applications for the next round of funding will open in early 2026.
For more information, visit the Koch Continuum Grant page.
If you’d like to contribute to an IRE program or fellowship, please visit our donation page.
(June 27, 2025) — Josh Hinkle, duPont Award-winning director of investigations and innovation for KXAN in Austin, Texas, is the new president of the Investigative Reporters and Editors Board of Directors.
The IRE Board elected officers for 2025-26 at a meeting Friday, June 27, 2025.
Kate Howard, editorial director at Reveal from the Center for Investigative Reporting, is the new vice president. Mark Greenblatt was reelected treasurer; he is executive editor of the Howard Center for Investigative Journalism at Arizona State University's Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication.
Ana Ley, reporter at The New York Times, was elected secretary. Alejandra Cancino, senior reporter at Injustice Watch, a non-profit newsroom, was elected the new at-large officer.
Immediate Past President Brian M. Rosenthal, investigative reporter at the New York Times, will continue to serve on the Executive Committee as Chair of the Board, a non-voting advisory position.
Other board members are Jodie Fleischer, managing editor of investigative content for Cox Media Group; Cindy Galli, most recently executive producer of ABC News’ award-winning investigative unit; Mary Hudetz, a ProPublica reporter based in Albuquerque, New Mexico; Caresse Jackman, national consumer investigative reporter with InvestigateTV/Gray Media based in Washington, D.C.; Andy Lehren, director of investigative reporting at CUNY’s Graduate School of Journalism; Paroma Soni, data and graphics reporter for POLITICO, based in New York, covering trade policy, agriculture and immigration; and Marina Villaneuve, investigative journalist for The Hechinger Report based in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
The next major IRE conference is the all-virtual AccessFest25, set for Oct. 9-11. Registration is now open, with a special early bird rate of just $50, celebrating IRE’s 50th anniversary.
(June 21, 2025) — IRE members have elected six journalists to the Board of Directors.
Five incumbents — Jodie Fleischer of Cox Media Group, Brian Rosenthal of The New York Times, Cindy Galli, Josh Hinkle of KXAN, and Ana Ley of The New York Times — have been re-elected to the Board.
One newcomer, Caresse Jackman of InvestigateTV/Gray Media, has been elected. Board members serve for two-year terms.
IRE members also elected two members, Walter Smith Randolph and Mark Lagerkvist, to the Contest Committee, which judges the IRE Awards. Contest Committee members serve for one-year terms.
Voting was conducted virtually. Results were announced at the 2025 membership meeting at the IRE Conference in New Orleans on June 21, 2025.
IRE’s Board of Directors consists of 13 total seats and serves as the governing body of Investigative Reporters and Editors. Board members vote on IRE business, serve on committees and task forces, and raise funds for the organization.
The new Board will meet soon to elect officers.
(June 21, 2025) — Investigative Reporters and Editors has awarded the Don Bolles Medal for 2025 to Rocío Gallegos, editorial director and co-founder of La Verdad, an investigative news outlet she helped form in 2018 to fight the censorship and control of information that the Mexican government exerted over local news organizations.
Gallegos has courageously reported from the U.S.-Mexico border since 1994, exposing government corruption and the impact of narcopolitics, including helping to report the truth behind the murders of two other journalists. She spent her early career at El Diario and co-founded the Juarez Journalists Network in 2011 as a way for local journalists to support and protect each other. That association evolved into La Verdad after it became clear that the government was successfully pressuring established news outlets to suppress stories.
They publish at great risk — for their own safety and that of their families. But it’s not an option to be silent, she said in Spanish, through an interpreter.
“It’s very difficult to explain, and it is very difficult to understand, but there is a lot of information that has to be made public,” she said. “Information has to be made public for change to occur — change for our community and for our families, too.”
“We choose to inform,” she said. “We choose to inform regardless of the risk.”
The Don Bolles Medal recognizes investigative journalists who have exhibited extraordinary courage in standing up against intimidation or efforts to suppress the truth about matters of public importance.
Because of her example, leadership and commitment to the work, IRE selected Gallegos for the 2025 Don Bolles Medal.
“She represents the often-invisible courage of local journalists covering migration, border violence, and institutional failure. Unlike better-resourced organizations or high-profile journalists, she operates in relative isolation and under continuous threat,” said committee member and previous honoree Pelin Unker.
The seven-person Don Bolles Medal committee also included three other previous recipients: Roman Badanin, Jeremy Jojola and Eric Meyer. Kaela Malig, John Ferrugia and AmyJo Brown also served.
“It is an incredible act of character to do this work when so much is personally at risk,” said Brown, the committee’s chair. “And it’s local journalists like Rocio who we need to hold horrible power to account.”
“In this time of increasing threats and shrinking accountability, her example reminds us what real courage looks like and why we need it more than ever,” said IRE Executive Director Diana Fuentes.
The Don Bolles Medal was created in 2017 in conjunction with the 40th anniversary of the Arizona Project, an effort led by IRE to finish the work of Don Bolles. The Arizona Republic investigative reporter was killed in 1976 by a car bomb in retaliation for his reporting.
Bolles' death came a few days before the first national IRE conference in Indianapolis, where the veteran reporter had been scheduled to speak on a panel. At the time, Bolles had been investigating allegations of land fraud involving prominent politicians and individuals with ties to organized crime.
After his murder, nearly 40 journalists from across the country descended on Arizona to complete his investigation. News organizations across the country published their findings.
Their message: Efforts to suppress the truth will be met by even greater efforts from the rest of the journalism community to tell it.
(June 21, 2025) — Shredding and blocking access to records of vital public interest detailing controversial federal government actions has earned Elon Musk and the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) the 2025 Golden Padlock Award from Investigative Reporters and Editors. The award celebrates annually the most secretive government agencies in the U.S.
DOGE was chosen from a competitive field of contenders on the strength of aggressive secrecy measures including removing itself from the transparency requirements of access to information legislation, having staff use outside computer servers and communication tools featuring disappearing messages and the mass firing of public servants, including those responsible for speaking to reporters.
A federal judge who ordered DOGE to release public records in March described the agency as operating in "unusual secrecy." In the process of dismantling USAID, DOGE ordered the shredding of documents by staff who then placed the remains in bags labelled "SECRET."
IRE's Golden Padlock committee also named four other finalists that exemplified the techniques of secrecy and obfuscation the award seeks to highlight.
The winner of the 2025 Golden Padlock Award was announced during the awards luncheon at the IRE Conference in New Orleans. IRE invited Musk and DOGE officials to attend and accept the award, but received no response.
(May 19, 2025) – Investigative Reporters and Editors has named its finalists for the 2025 Golden Padlock Award, recognizing the most secretive public agency or official in the U.S.
This year's competition highlights a competitive field of government agencies and public officials who have distinguished themselves in the art of secrecy.
"From surreptitiously shredding public records to masking the impacts of serious government failures to undermining the principles of open courts, these finalists have distinguished themselves in the field of bureaucratic opacity," said Robert Cribb, chair of IRE’s Golden Padlock Committee. "We honor them for the lengths they have gone to ensure the public interest does not threaten personal expediency.”
The finalists for the 2025 Golden Padlock Award are:
The Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Justice under President Trump, for their remarkable and ongoing lack of transparency around using the Alien Enemies Act to ship more than 238 Venezuelans accused of Tren de Aragua affiliation to a notorious El Salvador prison. The lack of transparency extends to the locations, criminal history, alleged gang ties and even the current well-being of the people sent to a prison linked with human rights violations. The administration refused judicial orders, citing vague and unverified national security concerns and fired at least one lawyer who acknowledged government mistakes in court. The government has still not released a public list of those sent to the prison. The men’s families and their legal counsel have mostly relied on a list published by CBS News to learn the fates of the 238.
The City of Columbus and Mayor Andrew Ginther: Hours after news broke that hackers had stolen a massive cache of data from the City of Columbus in 2024, Mayor Andrew Ginther told reporters the information was encrypted and posed no risk to citizens. But the hackers dumped much of the data on the dark web and, with the help of a whistleblower, NBC4 was able to show that this stolen data included social security numbers and driver's license information for hundreds of thousands of people, crime victim information and undercover officer identities. After the news broke, the city sued the whistleblower source, issuing a temporary restraining order to silence him, only dropping it after he agreed to stop sharing the data with the media and help the city with their investigation. City officials have since refused interviews and delayed public records requests. To date, they have still not acknowledged why the mayor told the public their personal data was not at risk. The city is now facing two class actions over the handling of the data.
The administration of Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont, for fighting to change transparency laws to avoid releasing data about the state’s criminal justice system. Most notably, after the state’s FOIA commission ordered the administration to release the case-level data requested by CT Insider and others, the administration instead hid a new exemption in a 351-page budget bill — avoiding debate. The exemption imperils the public’s access to even more state records, allowing any agency to reject an open record request for records created by other agencies.
The Department of Government Efficiency and Elon Musk: The mass firings of federal employees and dramatic reshaping of government by the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has unfolded with little of the transparency expected of federal agencies. The Trump administration contends DOGE is not subject to the Freedom of Information Act. The staff has used outside computer servers to conduct its work and an app that features disappearing messages to communicate. A federal judge who ordered DOGE to release public records in March described the agency as operating in "unusual secrecy." The DOGE-led dismantling of USAID included staff being ordered to "shred" documents and place the remains in burn bags labelled "SECRET." And DOGE efforts to downsize government also triggered 10,000 layoffs at the Department of Health and Human Services including the entire FOIA office at the Centers for Disease Control. This is happening under the auspices of the Trump Administration, which has scrubbed 150,000 pages of public information and data from government websites, a volume The Internet Archive's director has called "unprecedented" in scope and scale.
Minnesota's Ramsey County Judge Joy Bartscher, for ordering the destruction of public court records and barring journalists from reporting on treatment failures that contributed to a double murder. The record — a sentencing memo — detailed how an outpatient treatment facility repeatedly ignored clear warning signs that a man with a history of violence had relapsed before killing two men. After the memo was briefly posted to the court’s website, Bartscher not only ordered its removal but also blocked KARE 11 reporters from publishing its contents. Under threat of contempt, reporters were forced to withhold information learned from the memo. KARE 11 successfully challenged the gag order before the Minnesota Court of Appeals, which ruled the judge’s actions unconstitutional. Yet to this day, the public still cannot access the memo through the court’s website but can read it only through media coverage.
The winner of the 2025 Golden Padlock Award will be announced during the awards luncheon at the IRE Conference on Saturday, June 21, in New Orleans.
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