The IRE office will be closed from December 25th to January 5th.
Blog
Which businesses in your community have loans backed by the Small Business Administration? Find out using NICAR‘s recently updated SBA 7(a) loan data, which includes loans from 1953 through September, 2012. WHAT’S IN IT?The 7(a) program is the SBA’s most common loan program. It provides loans to small business owners who can’t obtain financing through…
Read More“A six-month investigation by KMGH-Denver found police departments across Colorado were failing to test hundreds of rape kits, critical evidence taken from a victim’s body after a sexual assault.” “While most departments said kits are rarely tested when the victim knows the suspect, one police department said these rape kits were prohibited from being tested…
Read MoreIn 2011, reporter Peter Sleeth was working on a historical account of a battle he had witnessed during his time as an embedded reporter in Iraq. His work on the piece stalled while researching Sgt. Jacob Butler, a soldier who had died in battle at As Samawah, Iraq in 2003. No one in the Army…
Read More“A worldwide investigation aimed at stripping away the anonymity that binds together one of the most shadowy aspects of Britain’s financial industry.” “In a unique collaboration, the Guardian and BBC Panorama have sifted through many gigabytes of data, obtained by the Washington-based International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, to find information that helped identify more than…
Read MoreThe Washington Post reports that thousands of criminal cases at the state and local level may have relied on exaggerated testimony or false forensic evidence to convict defendants of murder, rape and other felonies, according to former FBI agents.
Read MoreThis past week, journalists on the NICAR Listserv began discussing the most outrageous price quotes they’d received for open records requests. Canadian journalist David Weisz started the thread as research for a presentation he was giving to the Information Resource Management Association of Canada on the state of data journalism. “Having filed ATI requests myself and hearing the horror…
Read More“A federal judge has issued three key rulings over a four-year period that favored companies in which he owned stock, a California Watch analysis has found.” “Measures are in place to prevent judges from violating federal conflict-of-interest laws. But Judge Manuel Real, a 46-year veteran of the bench appointed by President Lyndon B. Johnson, appears…
Read More“For the second time in only two years, teachers at a Manatee school run by Lamprecht say they are not getting paid. The Prep Academy has employed about a dozen teachers with an enrollment of about 50 students, the Bradenton Herald reports.”
Read More“Alex Cameron of the Oklahoma Impact Team at KWTV News 9 in Oklahoma City and KOTV News on 6 in Tulsa found that Oklahoma counties’ lax record-keeping could cost them millions of dollars in repaid disaster-assistance funds to FEMA. Twelve counties had serious issues with paperwork and couldn’t document how they spent money they received…
Read More