Posts by Alena Rehberger
State Attorney Angela Corey has put 21 on death row since 2009
Since taking office in 2009, State Attorney Angela Corey has had the chance to speak to a lot of people trying to get their loved ones’ killers sentenced to death. She has put more people on Death Row than any other prosecutor in Florida. Corey’s office has sent 21 people to Death Row, and 18…
Read MoreCompanies still storing large amounts of toxic chemicals in Louisville
The number of Louisville companies storing dangerous quantities of toxic chemicals has dropped significantly in the past decade, but hundreds of thousands of area residents remain at risk of being sickened or killed in the event of a catastrophic leak. Federally required safety records analyzed by The Courier-Journal show that 21 firms report storing deadly…
Read MoreCabbies in Nevada taking the long way, preying on locals and tourists
The Nevada Taxicab Authority, the state agency that regulates the taxicab industry, has a lax record of enforcing the law, with its citations to drivers dropping significantly in 2013, an investigation by the Las Vegas Review-Journal found. The authority, a law enforcement agency with 26 officers, issued just two tickets in December 2013 to cabbies…
Read MoreHacks or Hackers?
By Kimberly Fields Tor Ekeland, an attorney who represents defendants in federal prosecutions under the Computer Fraud & Abuse Act; Scott Klein, senior editor of news applications at ProPublica; and Isaac Wolf, a national reporter for Scripps News, talked about the ethical issues surrounding web scraping during the session “Hacks or Hackers?” Here are some…
Read More2014 CAR Conference audio available online
Couldn’t make it to all of the sessions on your NICAR Conference wish list? We’ve got audio from nearly every panel and session. Full-length recordings are only available to IRE members. Some short audio clips will be made available to the public using Soundcloud. To access conference audio, log in to IRE website and go…
Read MoreHow to use inspection data to drive your stories
By Brittany Collins Michael Pell, a reporter on the Reuters data team in New York, and Joce Sterman, an investigative reporter for WMAR-Baltimore, showed journalists at the 2014 CAR Conference how to mine inspection reports for data. Several departments hold inspection documents, Sterman said. Local health departments keep inspection files on restaurants, schools, airport facilities,…
Read MoreTips for investigating racial inequality
By Mariya Moseley Nikole Hannah-Jones, ProPublica; Lawrence Lanahan, an independent journalist working in Baltimore; and Steve Doig, Arizona State University, shared tips and resources for investigating racial inequality during a session at the 2014 CAR Conference in Baltimore. Lanahan, who launched a year-long multimedia examination of regional inequality, offered three steps for beginning the investigation process: Get…
Read MoreData shows car accidents spike when sun aligns with Toronto street grid
Global News obtained 11 years of collision data and found that “Torontohenge,” when the setting sun aligns with Toronto’s east-west street grid and forces drivers to squint through salt-crusted windshields, coincides with the third-worst day of the year for car accidents. Get the full story and graphic.
Read MoreIn New York, a Heart Surgery Factory With ‘Obscene Levels’ of Pay
Reports of scheduled ER visits raised a concern internally that some cardiologists might be using the emergency department to get the costs of uninsured patients’ procedures covered, according to hospital correspondence. In some cases, the government’s Medicaid program and private insurers will pay for procedures done via an emergency-room visit that wouldn’t be covered otherwise,…
Read MoreIRE members win 2014 Goldsmith Prize
Seven IRE members from two news organizations won the 2014 Goldsmith Prize for Investigative Reporting. Chris Hamby, Ronnie Greene, Jim Morris and Chris Zubak-Skees of the Center for Public Integrity and Matthew Mosk, Brian Ross and Rhonda Schwartz of ABC News were recognized for their work on “Breathless and Burdened: Dying from Black Lung, Buried…
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