Editor’s note: Brandon Stahl of the Duluth News-Tribune attended an IRE Regional Boot Camp at the University of Minnesota Oct. 6-10, 2008. He recently published his first CAR-driven story, which was about home assessments. Read below to find out how he got the story. (IRE and the City University of New York will be hosting…
Read MoreA Center for Public Integrity investigation found that for years lenders have pressured appraisers to inflate home values to obtain higher mortgages. The article by Joe Eaton states, “In addition, the Center has obtained copies of lenders’ ‘blacklists’ containing the names of thousands of appraisers; some appraisers say lenders used those lists to exclude those…
Read MoreThe Washington Post‘s Cheryl Thompson investigated one of the most controversial police shootings Washington, D.C., has had in decades. A chain of police missteps and oversights invite questions about the killing of 14-year-old DeOnté Rawlings. Thompson ultimately found a more ambiguous picture than the police, who cleared the two off-duty officers of any wrongdoing.
Read MoreWe found Pennsylvania state employees spent more than $1.3 million on out-of-state travel last year after the governor banned such travel. How did you get started? (tip, editor assignment, etc.)This was simply a case of the reporter doing a public records check to see whether the travel ban was being followed. Based on past stories…
Read MoreThe investigation is about the use of Tasers by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, the national police force with a storied history that does most of the front-line policing in the Western provinces of British Columbia and Alberta. In the latest installment, we analyzed the 2008 data that we compiled from information from the force’s…
Read MoreAdditional arrests are pending in the murder of Chauncey Bailey according to reports from the San Francisco Chronicle and The Chauncey Bailey Project. As part of a plea agreement, Devaughndre Broussard is expected to testify before a grand jury next week that he was ordered to kill Bailey by former Your Black Muslim Bakery leader…
Read MoreThe Detroit Free Press looked into the on-going problem of streetlight outages in the city. “The Free Press spent three nights in March driving more than 200 miles of city streets examining the state of some of Detroit’s 88,000 lights, at least 9,000 of which are out.” Response to reports of outages are met with…
Read More“Civilian workers who suffered devastating injuries while supporting the U.S. war effort in Iraq and Afghanistan have come home to a grinding battle for basic medical care, artificial limbs, psychological counseling and other services,” according to a joint investigation by ABC News, the Los Angeles Times and ProPublica. The report says serious claims are routinely…
Read MoreThis has been a tough financial year for IRE, as it has been for our industry. We wanted to take this opportunity to update membership on some financial issues, and update some budgetary information we published last year. We are operating at a deficit, for the second year in a row. IRE has financial reserves…
Read MoreNext weekend IRE is holding a watchdog workshop in Detroit, Mich., in conjunction with the National Association of Black Journalists and the Detroit NABJ Chapter. Training is Saturday, April 25 and Sunday, April 26 at Wayne State University. On-site registrations will be accepted the day of the event. View the schedule. IRE is also hosting…
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