Total Newsroom Training provides intense, in-house training for small and medium-sized newsrooms dedicated to watchdog journalism. This is the second year IRE has offered the free program. More than 80 applications were submitted. Training is customized and includes two days of sessions ranging from public records battles to hands-on data analysis. “We had a large number of…
Read MoreThe Iowa Department of Administrative Services explicitly offered $6,500 to a former state employee last year in exchange for her secrecy, according to documents obtained by the Des Moines Register. The documents include a March 6, 2013, e-mail in which Department of Administrative Services attorney Ryan Lamb writes to an attorney representing former employee Carol…
Read MoreBy Hannah Schmidt This week on IRE Radio we’ll be taking you inside the 2013 IRE Awards with audio from some of the reporters, editors and producers who worked on prize-winning stories. View the complete list of winners here. Deadly Delays “Deadly Delays” exposed processing delays that put newborn lives at risk. Ellen Gabler is the reporter and…
Read MoreThe IRE Conference in San Francisco is only a few months away. Here are a few things to consider as you make your travel plans: Expected Speakers and Sessions The best in the business will gather for panels, hands-on classes and special presentations about covering business, public safety, government, health care, education, the military,…
Read MoreA Tulsa World investigation found that officials at Avalon Correction Center marked serious offenses such as escape attempts and substance-related offenses as minor misconducts, instead of X-level offenses. Avalon is a halfway house, which are among the lowest-security facilities for Department of Corrections inmates, where some inmates who committed nonviolence crimes finish the end of…
Read MoreThis week on IRE Radio we’ll be taking you inside the 2013 IRE Awards with audio from some of the reporters, editors and producers who worked on prize-winning stories. View the complete list of winners here. The Child Exchange Members from the Reuters investigative team spoke at the NICAR conference about the 2013 IRE Award-winning…
Read MoreThough felons are prohibited from voting in Maryland, 15 of them cast ballots in the 2010 gubernatorial election, according to a recently released audit. The finding in an Office of Legislative Audits’ report criticized the State Board of Elections, saying the agency “did not have an effective process to ensure that individuals serving a sentence…
Read MoreEvery day, thousands of Orange County students log in to their school-assigned Google accounts to work on lessons and send emails to teachers and classmates. What many parents and teachers don’t know is that Google is scanning and indexing every email that those students send and receive. The company recently disclosed how it processes the…
Read MoreThe News-Leader raised questions then about Lakeland Behavioral Health System and posed more questions when more runaways were reported. The paper found a report that says Lakeland failed to follow Medicaid rules by repeatedly using antipsychotic drugs to restrain children.
Read MoreIn a highly unusual move a little more than a year ago, a special grand jury declared that Portsmouth school officials had violated state law by holding on to tens of millions in year-end surplus dollars that should have been returned to the city. Yet six times since the financial maneuvers were first challenged by…
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