The IRE office will be closed from December 25th to January 5th.
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“Each day, trucks and railcars hauling hazardous materials share roadways with Iowa drivers and pass through Iowa towns and fields. But unless there is an accident, officials often don’t know what materials pass through the state.” Read the full story from IowaWatch/Investigative News Network here.
Read MoreThe Toronto Sun is appealing a decision by the City of Toronto to withhold hundreds of emails sent by staff members of beleaguered Mayor Rob Ford. The paper requested copies of emails sent and received by Ford’s former senior staffers around the time the mayor’s crack video scandal broke last year. From the Sun: The…
Read MoreStudents: this is your last week to apply for the Google Journalism Fellowship and have a shot at spending your summer with IRE and NICAR. Last summer I was the 2013 Google Journalism Fellow with IRE. Since I was reunited last week with all the great people in Columbia, MO for the computer-assisted reporting boot…
Read More“More than 840 people – 16 a week – died waiting for surgery in Victoria in the past year. The revelation comes as the length of time patients spend on elective surgery waiting lists continues to grow,” the Herald Sun in Melbourne, Australia, reports. Read their full story here.
Read MoreThe Tampa Bay Times and the Center for Investigative Reporting have teamed up to create the Charity Checker, which “searches the nation’s top charity watchdog and review sites and shows you their ratings, all in one place.” Check it out here.
Read More“The California Department of Insurance said it is exploring whether any laws were broken when insurance companies withdrew money from consumers’ accounts for plans they didn’t select,” ProPublic reports. Read the full story here.
Read More“Missouri’s public universities have spent almost a million dollars since 2011 on contracts with professional lobbyists to represent their interests in Jefferson City — while plying state legislators with tens of thousands of dollars more in free meals, sports outings, concert tickets and other perks,” the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports. Read the full story here.
Read More“The University of Missouri did not investigate or tell law enforcement officials about an alleged rape, possibly by one or more members of its football team, despite administrators finding out about the alleged 2010 incident more than a year ago, an “Outside the Lines” investigation has found. The alleged victim, a member of the swim…
Read MoreVirginia Supreme Court overturns blackout, opens public access to audio recordings of oral arguments
Members of the Virginia Supreme Court have a New Year’s Resolution — become more transparent. Starting this year, members of the public will finally have access to audio recordings of oral arguments. The recordings were once public, but installation of new recording equipment in January 2008 changed that. As the Alexandria Gazette Packet first reported last summer,…
Read MoreThe Wall Street Journal reports that “the site of a West Virginia chemical spill that contaminated the water supply for 300,000 people operated largely outside government oversight, highlighting gaps in regulations and prompting questions on whether local communities have a firm grasp on potential threats to drinking water.”
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