Blog
By Sukey Lewis & Julie Small, KQED This investigation began with a striking data finding. In analyzing newly accessible records obtained through California’s landmark police transparency law, our reporting team discovered that correctional officers at California State Prison, Sacramento — also known as New Folsom — were using serious force at three times the rate…
Read MoreBy Lori Jane Gliha and Brittany Freeman, Scripps News When a gunman killed 18 people during a shooting spree in Lewiston, Maine in October 2023, our team did what many reporters might do in a breaking news situation: we asked a ton of questions, and we filed open records requests for anything that might give…
Read MoreTwelve years ago, I was stomping through the corridors of the Pentagon as a military beat reporter for The Washington Post. At the Defense Department, there’s always a deluge of potential news stories and international incidents to monitor. The trick is figuring out which ones will keep your editors happy, which ones you can safely…
Read MoreBy Kathy Best, Howard Center for Investigative Journalism This is a story of AI-assisted redemption. In 1999, two enterprising Congressional Quarterly reporters wanted to show the link between congressional trips and the private interests that financed them. They used a portable scanner to make copies of travel reports and spent weeks inputting information by hand…
Read MoreBy Nadia Hamdan, Reveal Alexia Fernández Campbell was in Baltimore when she got the news. It was March and she was attending the NICAR 2024 conference, where her colleague, Pratheek Rebala, would be on a panel to talk about the big project they had been working on together, “Forty Acres and a Lie.” At the…
Read MoreBy Richard Martin, The Baltimore Banner On March 26, 2024, the cargo ship Dali lost power while leaving the Port of Baltimore and slammed into a critical support pier of the Francis Scott Key Bridge. It was 1:24 a.m., and within seconds the bridge crumpled into the cold Patapsco River, sending six construction workers working…
Read MoreThe incredible work done by the winners of of the 2024 IRE Awards has changed and saved lives. These spectacular journalists have crossed borders, built databases, dug through thousands of pages of confidential records, and risked their own safety to reveal wrongdoing from incredibly powerful people. And in a time when those powerful people increasingly…
Read MoreHonoring longtime IRE member and mentor Susan Carroll By Lise Olsen, The Texas Observer As a monster storm approached in August 2017, my friend Susan Carroll arranged for others to care for her young children in order to camp out in the Houston Chronicle newsroom along busy Loop 610. She stayed there awaiting the arrival…
Read More(September 23, 2025) — Investigative Reporters & Editors and its Board of Directors join with numerous newsrooms and journalism organizations in condemning the Pentagon’s new requirement for reporters to sign a pledge limiting their ability to report without government approval in exchange for a press credential. “This unprecedented move undermines the fundamental principles of journalistic…
Read More(September 23, 2025) — Investigative Reporters and Editors joins dozens of organizations in demanding the release of detained journalist Mario Guevara. Guevara was arrested June 14 in metro Atlanta while covering a protest, then transferred to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) custody, where he remains. He has been detained for more than 100 days —…
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