The 2025 Freelance Fellowship Recipients
A normal day on the local government beat became two months of investigating for Lansing State Journal reporter Lindsay VanHulle. After a portion of the residential St. Anne Lofts building collapsed in East Lansing, Mich., VanHulle discovered problems in the city’s building code and development programs. Prior to the building’s collapse, these problems allowed unpermitted…
Read MoreIn a follow-up to its story on the failure’s of Obama administration agencies to respond to Freedom of Information Act requests, Bloomberg News reports that at least 25 percent of FOIA requests are outsourced to contractors. “Since fiscal 2009, the year President Barack Obama took office, spending on FOIA-related contracts has jumped about 40 percent, leaving transparency advocates wondering…
Read MoreBy Mc Nelly Torres Víctor Hugo Michel is excited and overwhelmed. He hasn’t stopped thinking about all the stories he will be able to report and write using the data analysis and investigative tools he learned this past weekend at the IberoAmericana University in México City. “I never thought I could organize data, rank it and compare it…
Read MoreOn Thursday, The Charlotte Observer and the News & Observer in Raleigh won bronze in the Barlett & Steele Awards for Investigative Business Journalism, funded by the Donald W. Reynolds National Center for Business Journalism, for their series “Prognosis: Profits,” in which the reporters dissected the finances of large healthcare institutions and discovered inflated prices, lawsuits against thousands…
Read MoreThe New York Times, USA Today and a joint project by The Charlotte Observer and The Raleigh News & Observer were winners in the sixth annual Barlett & Steele Awards for Investigative Business Journalism. The awards are funded by the Donald W. Reynolds National Center for Business Journalism and named for the investigative team of Don Barlett and Jim…
Read More“To win national office in America, candidates must appeal to a mosaic of diverse communities, which vary in culture, religion, income, education, geography and political views. How well they succeed in appealing to some groups without alienating others can only be measured by data that reflects this rich diversity. Working with Ipsos, Reuters has created…
Read MoreTransparency Watch is an occasional series from IRE tracking the fight for open records. If you have a story about a quest for public records you’d like to share, email us at web@ire.org. By Danielle Ivory, Bloomberg President Barack Obama on his first full day in office ordered federal officials to “usher in a new era of open…
Read MoreChesapeake Energy has become the principal player in the largest land boom in America since the 1850s California Gold Rush, amassing acreage positions that rival those of any U.S. energy company. Its strategy is clearly spelled out in a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission: “We believed that the winner of these land…
Read MoreThe journalists who attend the Computer-Assisted Reporting Conference do many things for their newsrooms: They analyze data, build websites, write stories, scrape and acquire records. To honor this work, the National Institute for Computer-Assisted Reporting will sell a T-shirt celebrating the data geek in us all, and you’ll help design it. Proceeds from the shirt will help…
Read MoreIn a recent piece for the Florida Center for Investigative Reporting, Amy Green reports on the cost of sugar supports to American taxpayers. She is currently working on a book about the Florida Everglades, which will explore political and environmental impacts on the area.When Amy Green, a native Floridian, thinks of the Florida Everglades, she…
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