The early bird deadline for 
The 2025 Freelance Fellowship Recipients
A Seattle Times investigation has found that people like Gregory Benson are now released on technicalities from King County hospitals — without treatment or monitoring — on average every other day. During a recent 10-week period, at least 35 people deemed by the county to be imminent threats to themselves or others were released after…
Read More“Even as pack-the-house players like Derrick Rose, Jabari Parker and Marcus Jordan led their teams to state titles in recent years, the Illinois High School Association has seen revenues and profits from its marquee state boys basketball tournament plummet,” the Chicago-Sun Times reported. “Between 2006 and last year, profits from the tournament fell by 29…
Read More“A News Tribune investigation found that at least eight cars have plunged into the water at the Narrows Marina boat launch over the past 17 years. Four of 11 occupants were killed. Another was left permanently disabled,” the News Tribune reported. The accidents involved different types of people, from thieves outrunning the cops to an…
Read More“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…
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