The IRE office will be closed from December 25th to January 5th.
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IRE is collecting resources for journalist who are covering today’s earthquake, which affected large portions of the Eastern Seaboard. Share ideas with us at tips@ire.org or send us a note on Twitter or Facebook. Story suggestions: Request your community’s emergency/disaster plans. After the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, many areas beefed up their disaster response plans. Were those procedures followed?…
Read MoreShaun Hittle, of the Lawrence Journal-World, investigates one charity in Lawrence, KS, and the man behind it. Andrew Gruber, The Purple Heart Veterans Foundation’s director who payed his brother’s fundraising business nearly a half million dollars in 2010 is now being investigated on past criminal charges. Among many other charges, Andrew spent time in a Kansas prison for…
Read MoreIn the aftermath of the devastating Joplin tornadoes, cases of a rare fungus that cause potentially deadly infections in humans began showing up in Southwestern Missouri.Local health officials in Green County contacted state health officials with the evidence and suggested sounding a statewide alert. However, Missouri officials declined citing the concern of causing public panic.…
Read MoreRob O’Dell, of the Arizona Daily Star, reports on the shameful acts of three of the largest banks in Arizona. “Banks that took bailout money were supposed to use part of the taxpayer-provided cash infusion to help customers avoid foreclosure, but instead, many of them are buying up struggling homeowners’ tax debt. The tax liens…
Read More“Detroit Free Press investigative reporter Jennifer Dixon reports Sunday that Fannie Mae is privately telling banks to foreclose on homeowners who are more than a year deliquent even if the borrowers are seeking a federal loan modification. The policy, uncovered in confidential Fannie Mae records, is contrary to Fannie Mae’s public assurances that homeowners will be…
Read MoreMatt Haag from The Dallas Morning News reports that several schools (most in southern Dallas) in the Independent School District (ISD) have halted their construction projects. One school, Pearl C. Anderson, already paid $400,000 for renovations before the construction was called off, said District spokesman Jon Dahlander. But he said some of the money went…
Read MoreLearn data visualization during a one-day workshop presented by IRE and The Society for News Design. Sarah Cohen, Jaimi Dowdell and Derek Willis will lead the hands-on workshop that’ll take attendees from soup-to-nuts in data manipulation and visualization. We’ll start off teaching where to find public data, how to clean, organize and prepare it, including some Excel training,…
Read MoreBrian McVicar from The Muskegon Chronicle investigates the thousands of food code violations that were reported from 2007-2010 in Muskegon County, Michigan (an area with the population size of about 174,000 according to Muskegon County’s website http://www.co.muskegon.mi.us/). However, restaurants aren’t the only ones skirting the law, “Schools, hospitals, and food stands found in places such as Michigan’s…
Read MoreFox 9 News in Minneapolis, MN went undercover to investigate the claim that some veterinary clinics are vaccinating pets too often. Jeff Baillon reports on what can happen to your dog if you listen to your vet and vaccinate for rabies every two years, instead of the vaccine’s intended 1 or 3 year dose. The…
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