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To celebrate Sunshine Week we’ll be sharing exclusive audio, tipsheets and reporting on FOIA battles and open government. Newspapers across the country kicked off the week with stories analyzing FOIA responses and violations. Here’s a look at some of the coverage: Few cited for open government violations | Gannett Wisconsin Media Investigative Team Public officials…
Read MoreNow current through 2013, the National Bridge Inventory database can help you assess the soundness of bridges in your area. Journalists can use the data to investigate bridges by identifying those with structural problems, or that haven’t been recently inspected. Other key fields include average daily traffic and overall sufficiency rating. The records represent information…
Read MoreFollowing a report by the Center for Investigative Reporting, the City Council of Richmond, Calif. voted to give residents of the Hacienda public housing complex vouchers to move into private housing. Tim Jones, executive director of the Richmond Housing Authority, called the bulding uninhabitable, and dozens of residents have complained of health problems due to…
Read MoreNASA officials say they’re working to resolve “widespread” errors in travel disclosures dating back to at least 2009, according to a report from Scripps News. Problems range from lax oversight – some NASA travelers booked upgrades costing thousands of dollars – to missing or error-riddled reports. The federal agency is required each year to disclose all upgraded…
Read MoreBy Hannah Schmidt Journalists Denise Malan, Ben Poston and Tim Wheeler all used data to create stories on hazardous materials and the environment. The three discussed state and national databases that track pollution and hazardous waste at the NICAR Conference in Baltimore. NICAR offers a hazardous waste database. Malan described how to use it and what…
Read MoreDo you have reporters or editors on your staff who would benefit from training to help them produce enterprise and investigative stories? Thanks to a grant from Sigma Delta Chi Foundation, the Society for Professional Journalists is working with Investigative Reporters and Editors and the New England Center for Investigative Reporting to offer two-day Watchdog Reporting Workshops for journalists from your region. …
Read MoreA reporter from The Patriot Ledger in Quincy, Mass. caught city employees burning reams of public records, all without approval from the state. Old purchase orders, payroll records and utility bills, along with a handful of other documents, went up in smoke. The city’s public works commissioner “emphasized that all of the records burned in…
Read MoreAcross the United States, police and prosecutors are allowing tens of thousands of wanted felons — including more than 3,300 people accused of sexual assaults, robberies and homicides — to escape justice merely by crossing a state border, a USA TODAY investigation found. Those decisions, almost always made in secret, permit fugitives to go free…
Read More“When I first attended the annual conference of the National Institute for Computer-Assisted Reporting (NICAR) in 2012, it was as a speaker,” writes Alexander Howard, a Tow Fellow at Columbia Journalism School’s center for digital journalism innovation. “I was there to give a short talk about new data coming from the open governent movement. While it went well,…
Read MorePaige St. John No such records exist. That’s the message Paige St. John received when she requested audit records on the Los Angeles County Probation Department’s GPS monitoring program. Despite the rocky start, the Los Angeles Times reporter went on to break the story about trivial alerts from GPS monitors overwhelming probation officers in LA…
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