Congratulations to several IRE members who won Pulitzer Prizes today. Daniel Gilbert, who won the Public Service Pulitzer, also won an IRE Award this year. The Pulitzer committee wrote that Gilbert’s work illuminated “the murky mismanagement of natural-gas royalties owed to thousands of land owners in southwest Virginia, spurring remedial action by state lawmakers.” Gilbert,…
Read MoreHunter L. Gorinson, of The Hill Rag (Washington, D.C.), exposed how Sinclair Skinner, a politically connected subcontractor, bilked the city out hundreds of thousands of dollars in overcharges for contract work as a surveyor for a D.C. park renovation project. Skinner’s company, Liberty Engineering & Design (LEAD), is not even licensed to survey in the…
Read MoreRick Moriarty of The Post-Standard (Syracuse, N.Y.) reports on abuses of loopholes in the state’s Brownfield Cleanup Program, a law meant to encourage development on contaminated property through tax credits for environmental cleanup. The developer of Destiny USA, a stalled shopping mall expansion project, could collect up to $54 million in tax breaks despite insignificant…
Read MoreJames Drew of The Dallas Morning News found that a criminal investigation into alleged abuse by two workers at a state veterans home in West Texas languished for more than two years because of confusion over who should investigate, cumbersome bureaucracy, and conflicts among local police, state officials, and veterans home administrators. Felony charges were…
Read MoreJust a quick reminder that IRE and NICAR have resources available to assist in covering the fatal explosion at the Upper Big Branch mine in West Virginia. A list of links and resources can be found in our Breaking News archive. Contact the Resource Center (573-882-3364 or rescntr@ire.org) or the Database Library (573-884-7711) for additional…
Read MoreTom Vanden Brook and Ken Dilanian of USA Today? report that Defense Secretary Robert Gates “ordered an overhaul of the Pentagon’s use of retired senior officers to advise the military, limiting the pay of “senior mentors” and requiring them to disclose their business ties to defense contractors.” This move is in response to a USA…
Read MoreThe name of the only known fatality from a secret prison network that the CIA operated overseas after the 9/11 attacks is finally known, due to an Associated Press investigation of his imprisonment and death. Gul Rahman, a suspected militant imprisoned in a CIA compound code-named the Salt Pit near Kabul, was found dead in…
Read MoreUsing electronic payroll records, Post-Standard (Syracuse, N.Y) reporter Delen Goldberg found that New York state officials hired 51,000 people at a cost to taxpayers of more than $1 billion in salaries since Gov. David Paterson ordered a “hard” hiring freeze in state government nearly two years ago. Former Syracuse Mayor Matt Driscoll earns $155,000 annually…
Read MoreInvestigations that exposed failures of government regulation, abuse of military personnel and failures of the criminal justice system are among the work honored in the 2009 Investigative Reporters and Editors Awards. This year there were two recipients of the top prize, the IRE Medal. The New York Times’ Charles Duhigg and a team of database…
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