The 2025 Freelance Fellowship Recipients
“A former CIA officer has broken the U.S. silence around the 2003 abduction of a radical Islamist cleric in Italy, charging that the agency inflated the threat the preacher posed and that the United States then allowed Italy to prosecute her and other Americans to shield President George W. Bush and other U.S. officials from…
Read MoreThe Pocono Record posted nearly 14,000 public documents (won in a protracted public records court battle) in a search for clues about what happened to money pledged to project at a public college. The effort paid off as a reader flagged a needle in the haystack.
Read MoreAccording to a Newsday report, “a North Bellport street gang that calls itself the “Natural Born Killers” is recruiting children as young as 9 years old to join the group, said residents and the head of the Suffolk County Legislature’s public safety committee.”
Read More“No video. No audio. No transcripts. The Virginia Supreme Court operates in a total blackout. The Alexandria Gazette Packet exposes the shocking lack of transparency at the commonwealth’s top court.”
Read More“A decade after schools were required to offer tutoring sessions by third-party vendors, an increasing number of school districts and researchers say the multibillion-dollar system is broken,” according to The Sacramento Bee.
Read More“According to a Los Angeles Times examination of data obtained under the California Public Records Act, Los Angeles’ Department of Water and Power has paid thousands of employees a total of $35.5 million since 2010 in extra sick days under an unusual program that the utility’s top executive acknowledges has been vulnerable to abuse.”
Read MoreUSA Today launched the first part of its investigation titled Supplement Shell Game: The People behind risky pills. The first article examines Matt Cahill, who has spent time in federal prison and now faces another federal charge after creating a series of products over the past 12 years — one of which contained a pesticide…
Read MoreLabor Day is just around the corner, and we all know that boating enthusiasts (and wannabes) are getting as much boating in as possible before it gets too cold. Hence, the NICAR database library is releasing the latest year (2012) of the Coast Guard’s U.S. Recreational Boat Accident Database. WHAT’S IN IT?This database includes accident reports from 1969 through 2012.…
Read MoreFCIR created this map of boating accidents. Click the map for the interactive version. Last January, Florida Center for Investigative Reporting and NBC 6 in Miami announced a partnership to produce more local in-depth investigations. Even before our partnership was announced, we had already decided during a brainstorm session that boating fatalities would be one…
Read MoreNext week the results of a national survey research project conducted by AR&D and IRE will be revealed. Join us for a webinar on Tuesday, July 30 at 11 a.m. Central Time. What types of investigative stories are the most compelling? Why might investigative reporting save your newsroom? Is the crowd ready to help you…
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