The early bird deadline for 
The 2025 Freelance Fellowship Recipients
Across 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…
Read MoreAmerica’s colleges and universities are quietly shifting the burden of tuition increases onto low-income students, according to The Dallas Morning News and The Hechinger Report. Yet many wealthy families are seeing their costs rise more slowly, or even fall, an analysis of federal data shows. The trend could further widen the gap between the nation’s…
Read MoreSeveral IRE members were among the winners of the 2013 Awards for Excellence in Health Care Journalism. The Association of Health Care Journalists received more than 475 entries across 12 categories. Read more about the awards. The following IRE members received recognition: Alison Young and John Hillkirk, USA TODAY, took second place in the Investigative…
Read MoreThe 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 MoreThe 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 MoreSince 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 MoreDelaware Chief Medical Examiner Richard T. Callery, who was suspended with pay on Feb. 25, is the subject of a criminal investigation into whether he misused state resources to run a private business, The News Journal has learned.
Read MoreCalifornia counties are confounding the state’s court-ordered efforts to sharply reduce its inmate population by sending state prisons far more convicts than anticipated, including a record number of people with second felony convictions. The surge in offenders requiring state prison sentences is undermining a nearly 3-year-old law pushed by Gov. Jerry Brown. The legislation restructured…
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