The IRE office will be closed from December 25th to January 5th.
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“In a five-part series launched Saturday, the Charlotte Observer reveals that N.C. medical examiners routinely fail to follow crucial investigative steps, raising questions about the accuracy of thousands of death rulings. The living face the consequences. Widows can be cheated out of insurance money. Families may never learn why their loved ones died. Killers can…
Read More“A death isn’t officially ruled an overdose until the state medical examiner’s office says so, usually after an autopsy and tests to confirm the presence of drugs in the person’s body. And getting those results can take months or even years, a Patriot Ledger review of death certificates on file in Quincy, Weymouth and Braintree…
Read More“If rivers, rails and roads are the arteries of America’s surging petrochemicals industry, tank and barge cleaners are its kidneys, purifying containers so they can return to refineries and to energy and chemical companies across the nation to be refilled,” the Houston Chronicle reported. “But government health and safety experts don’t know much about these…
Read MoreDrunk behind the wheel again: For one man, 12 DUI arrests | The News Journal (Wilmington, DE) Despite a series of laws over the years that criminalized drunken driving for repeat offenders and made prison time mandatory, James R. Fisher has been arrested 12 times for driving under the influence since 1991. The 55-year-old’s latest arrest,…
Read More“Despite a series of laws over the years that criminalized drunken driving for repeat offenders and made prison time mandatory, James R. Fisher has been arrested 12 times for driving under the influence since 1991,” The Wilmington News Journal reported. “The 55-year-old’s latest arrest, number 12, came in March, about a year after his release…
Read MoreThe Center for Investigative Reporting has uncovered more problems in Richmond, California’s public housing system. Two maintenance workers, who also live in public housing, were found to have double-billed for tasks, billed for more hours than were worked and charged overtime during their regularly-scheduled shifts. Overtime paid to the two workers totaled more than $125,000 over four years.…
Read MoreWill Evans of The Center for Investigative Reporting explains how he started investigating an Oakland, Calif. church school that appears to have vastly inflated its enrollment numbers to collect extra taxpayer funding. “The place was in total disrepair, but the pastor drove an Escalade,” Evans said. In this first clip, Evans explains how he found…
Read MoreDocuments entered into court record in the lawsuit of one prisoner on death row show that the Louisiana Department of Corrections had documents that would have fulfilled a records request made by The Lens in 2013. The Lens, a non-profit newsroom in New Orleans, had previously requested records pertaining to the purchase and inventory of the state’s…
Read MoreA special track of nine IRE Conference panels this year will focus on elevating our writing. It will include a series of “master classes” led by Pulitzer winning journalists Louise Kiernan, Walt Bogdanich and Sam Roe who each will dissect one of their classic prize-winning investigations with an emphasis on the writing choices. We’ll also…
Read MoreThe unsupervised spending in El Chaparral is symptomatic of a vast community aid effort with lax financial controls. A network of more than 70,000 community groups has received the equivalent of at least $7.9 billion since 2006 from the federal agency that provides much of the financing for the program, Reuters calculates, based on official…
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