Reporters for The Telegraph went undercover to reveal that exam boards are advising teachers on how to word questions and arrange exams so that students are more likely to obtain higher marks. “The advice appears to go far beyond the standard “guidance” and opens exam boards to accusations that they are undermining the purpose of…
Read MoreCovering religious organizations can be difficult, because it can be tough to get public documents. Kansas City Star reporter Judy Thomas, spoke at an IRE training session for McClatchy journalists and offers the following tips: Get to know your subjects inside out. Subscribe to newsletters, magazines and other publications of the organizations you cover. Get…
Read MoreA New Jersey Watchdog investigation by Mark Lagerkvist reveals that more than 20 “investigators and supervisors who work for Attorney General Paula T. Dow and her Division of Criminal Justice” are receiving both a salary and a pension. For example, the New Jersey State Police captain retired at age 50. However, he “began work at…
Read More“White criminals seeking presidential pardons over the past decade have been nearly four times as likely to succeed as minorities, a ProPublica examination, co-published with The Washington Post, has found. Blacks have had the poorest chance of receiving the president’s ultimate act of mercy, according to an analysis of previously unreleased records and related data.”
Read More“In a multi-day project, Anthony Cormier and Matthew Doig of The Sarasota Herald-Tribune investigate why law enforcement agencies around Florida employ officers despite cases of serious misconduct in their past, involving everything from violence and perjury to drugs and sexual assault. Many more cases stay hidden because agencies fail to thoroughly investigate or report complaints.”…
Read MoreJack Dolan, Los Angeles Times, found that “California prisons have paid doctors and mental health professionals accused of malpractice an estimated $8.7 million since 2006 to do no work at all or to perform menial chores like sorting mail, tossing out old medical supplies and reviewing inmate charts for clerical errors.” “At least 30 medical…
Read More“MaryJo Webster of The Pioneer Press reported that the state of Minnesota paid about $57 million in unused sick time from January 2008 to June 2012 to departing workers. Now, Minnesota legislators from both sides of the aisle are calling for inquiries into the payments, with one senator saying, “we need to take an aggressive…
Read More“From 2008 through 2010, Chino Valley Medical Center in San Bernardino County claimed that 35.2 percent of its Medicare patients were suffering from acture heart failure. That’s six times the state average, according to a California Watch analysis of Medicare billing data. However, in 2006, before Medicare began making bonus payments to hospitals treating patients…
Read MoreThere are two things we know data journalists love: nerdy jokes and T-shirts. When we asked for suggestions for a NICAR T-shirt to be sold at the 2012 CAR Conference in St. Louis, we didn’t expect it there to be any shortage of ideas. The first round of submissions are in, and they’re pretty much…
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