The early bird deadline for 
The 2025 Freelance Fellowship Recipients
In December 2001, the Chicago Tribune published a five-part series, “Cops and Confessions,” with one of the installments highlighting the case of Daniel Taylor, an inmate serving a life sentence without parole for a double murder he didn’t commit. Nearly 12 years later, on June 28th, 2013, Cook County prosecutors would admit the truth and…
Read MoreDr. Christopher Duntsch began his medical practice in 2010, The Texas Observer reports, and by the time the state revoked his license in 2013, a series of botched surgeries had left two of his patients dead and four paralyzed. The real tragedy of the story, according to the Texas Observer, is how preventable it was:…
Read MoreThe Washington Post takes an in-depth look at the “black budget” which spans over a dozen agencies to make up the National Intelligence Program. Wilson Andrews and Todd Lindeman use data visualizations to lay out what the $52.6 billion is spent on.
Read MoreJill Riepenhoff of The Columbus Dispatch shares tips on investigating college sports, from how to examine the rule book and find story ideas to using the NCAA’s infraction database and digging into athletes’ mysterious departures from their teams. Watch it here. Riepenhoff has worked at The Columbus Dispatch since 1985 and as a projects reporter…
Read MoreLast week IRE’s Jaimi Dowdell and Liz Lucas led a four-day boot camp in data analysis at Temple University’s Center for Public Interest Journalism. The Center for Public Interest Journalism sponsored the training, lowering the cost from $800 to $200. Participants learned to clean and analyze data using Microsoft Excel and Structured Query Language with Microsoft…
Read MoreJournalists from an online news service in Hawaii have started a public service law center to help citizen’s navigate the state’s open record laws. Honolulu-based Civil Beat reports that Hawaii has decent public information laws, but in practice state and county government fail to follow and enforce the law. Patti Epler of Civil Beat describes…
Read More“As children’s birthday parties ballooned into themed events and pricey productions in recent years, bounce houses became must-have entertainment for some parents. But as the bounce house rental business has grown locally, so have the number of unlicensed operators. At least 170 of these businesses advertise their services in the Houston region, but only 30…
Read More“These days, Terry, (Mike) Newman and tens of thousands of other low-income Kentuckians feel under attack. Subsidies for child care and kinship care, the two state programs most central to their lives, which allow them to parent and prevent their fragile work routines from collapsing, were all but eliminated from this year’s budget. Earlier this week, families rallied in Frankfort,…
Read More“For decades, weapons confiscated by police in Texas were supposed to be repurposed for law enforcement use — or else destroyed. Starting next month, Texans will be able to purchase some of them instead,” according to a Texas Tribune report.
Read MoreThe Minneapolis Star Tribune reports: “If candidates for mayor of Minneapolis were running in Boston, they would file a report online of their campaign contributions every two weeks for six months before the election. If they were running in Seattle? Once a week. And in a range of other cities with a mayoral election this fall, they…
Read More