The Seattle Times takes a look, in a four-part series, at how Amazon.com, “one of the Internet’s most-recognized name brands” compares to other big companies in the Seattle area when it comes to local charitable givings. “Last year, amid a troubled economy, United Way of King County said it received record donations from some of…
Read MoreIRE offers more ways than ever to receive financial help to attend our annual conference. This year we’ve added a new fellowship in remembrance of longtime IRE member and supporter David Dietz. The fellowship honors his memory and legacy by helping a journalist how has demonstrated an interest in fnancial investigative journalism and who has…
Read More“A Dayton Daily News examination has found that federal agencies have awarded tens of millions of dollars in taxpayer-funded contracts to businesses operating in Ohio that claimed to be owned and controlled by military veterans with service-related disabilities, only to conclude the companies lied to the government when they said a disabled veteran was in…
Read MoreInvestigations that exposed major abuses and wrongdoing by law enforcement agencies and the failure of government to protect society’s most vulnerable members are among the work honored in the 2011 Investigative Reporters and Editors Awards. Covering 15 categories across several media platforms and a range of market sizes, the IRE Awards recognize the most outstanding…
Read MoreBy Susan Snyder and Dylan Purcell, The Philadelphia Inquirer A series of racial attacks at a Philadelphia high school in late 2009 – and the school district’s inadequate response – prompted The Inquirer to launch an investigation into school violence. Its seven-part series, “Assault on Learning“, and follow-up stories published throughout the past year, showed that…
Read MoreIRE’s annual list of investigative books can be viewed here and seen below. More than 200 books published in 2011 made the list. The annual list is compiled by Steve Weinberg. If you know of an investigative/explanatory book written by an American journalist published last year for public sale and fail to see it listed, please…
Read MoreBy Beverly Magley and Anne Sherwood, National Institute on Money in State Politics For your stories about 2012 state elections, check out free campaign-finance information at The National Institute on Money in State Politics (followthemoney.org), a nonpartisan not-for-profit organization. In addition to downloadable data sets, you can mine reports on trends and anomalies, as well…
Read MoreBy Viveca Novak Center for Responsive Politics The 2012 election promises to be the most expensive on record. One important way in which it differs from the 2008 contest: the presence of more outside groups, spending much more money, thanks to the Supreme Court’s opinion in Citizens United v. FEC in 2010 and subsequent legal…
Read MorePhoto credit:Elie Gardner/Post-Dispatch 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…
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