The IRE office will be closed from December 25th to January 5th.
Blog
The latest in IRE’s series of bilingual border workshops was a great success. Held in Laredo Nov. 12-13 in a historic hotel with a view of the Rio Grande river and the border itself, the event attracted about 50 journalists from Mexico and the United States, including about a dozen who also used the trip…
Read MoreA Palm Beach Post investigation showed that Palm Beach County government officials paid a convicted child molester, thieves, drug dealers and other people with criminal records nearly half a million dollars to run subsidized summer camps for homeless and foster children during the past three years. The story also called attention to a loophole in Florida law…
Read MoreFour student journalists will be selected as winners in IRE’s new student computer-assisted reporting contest. The winners will receive free registration to IRE’s Computer-Assisted Reporting Conference on Feb. 24-27 in Raleigh, N.C.; three nights of lodging at the conference hotel; and a slot on a panel. The entry deadline is Jan. 28. The contest is…
Read MoreJonathan D. Salant and Traci McMillan of Bloomberg News, using a database built for the 2010 elections, found that U.S. Chamber of Commerce and other Republican-leaning outside groups spent millions of dollars on House and Senate races and had a winning record in the 2010 midterm elections.
Read MoreA ProPublica investigation into the state of dialysis care in the United States found “patients commonly receive treatment in settings that are unsanitary and prone to perilous lapses in care. Regulators have few tools and little will to enforce quality standards. Industry consolidation has left patients with fewer choices of provider. The government has withheld…
Read MoreAn investigation by of The Salt Lake Tribune (Salt Lake City, Utah) found that inconsistently reported crime data has meant criminal activity on the country’s American Indian reservations is not well understood. Due to inconsistencies in the reporting of this data, some tribes have missed the chance for federal money for resource intended to help…
Read More“A Morning Call (Allentown, Pa.) analysis of city payroll records obtained through the state Right to Know Law found that 46 percent of the total sick days taken by firefighters through mid-October have been combined with holidays, personal days or vacation days for extended time away from work.” Such a pattern suggests possible misuse of…
Read MoreYang Wang, of the Houston Chronicle, found a number of massage parlors remain open despite repeated police raids for vice crime and licensing violations. In Houston, “292 establishments have been cited by police for compliance violations, including operating without a state license, hiring unlicensed workers, operating during prohibited hours or engaging in vice crimes.” Vice…
Read MoreClare Baldwin, Soyoung Kim and Kevin Krolicki, of Reuters, report that “a review of key events leading up to GM’s IPO and interviews with people involved inside and outside the company show that the U.S. government has been running key aspects of the landmark stock deal and exerting tight oversight on management decisions seen as…
Read MoreJohn Diedrich and Ryan H of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel report that a pair of criminals who robbed a 17-year-old at gunpoint avoided incarceration because “neither the judge nor the prosecutor appears to have considered the crime or their past records to be serious, according to transcripts of the sentencing. Rather than a brazen holdup…
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