The early bird deadline for 
It's time for the NICAR 2026 T-shirt contest!
James Drew of The Dallas Morning News found that a criminal investigation into alleged abuse by two workers at a state veterans home in West Texas languished for more than two years because of confusion over who should investigate, cumbersome bureaucracy, and conflicts among local police, state officials, and veterans home administrators. Felony charges were…
Read MoreJust a quick reminder that IRE and NICAR have resources available to assist in covering the fatal explosion at the Upper Big Branch mine in West Virginia. A list of links and resources can be found in our Breaking News archive. Contact the Resource Center (573-882-3364 or rescntr@ire.org) or the Database Library (573-884-7711) for additional…
Read MoreTom Vanden Brook and Ken Dilanian of USA Today? report that Defense Secretary Robert Gates “ordered an overhaul of the Pentagon’s use of retired senior officers to advise the military, limiting the pay of “senior mentors” and requiring them to disclose their business ties to defense contractors.” This move is in response to a USA…
Read MoreThe name of the only known fatality from a secret prison network that the CIA operated overseas after the 9/11 attacks is finally known, due to an Associated Press investigation of his imprisonment and death. Gul Rahman, a suspected militant imprisoned in a CIA compound code-named the Salt Pit near Kabul, was found dead in…
Read MoreUsing electronic payroll records, Post-Standard (Syracuse, N.Y) reporter Delen Goldberg found that New York state officials hired 51,000 people at a cost to taxpayers of more than $1 billion in salaries since Gov. David Paterson ordered a “hard” hiring freeze in state government nearly two years ago. Former Syracuse Mayor Matt Driscoll earns $155,000 annually…
Read MoreInvestigations that exposed failures of government regulation, abuse of military personnel and failures of the criminal justice system are among the work honored in the 2009 Investigative Reporters and Editors Awards. This year there were two recipients of the top prize, the IRE Medal. The New York Times’ Charles Duhigg and a team of database…
Read MoreOnce confined to cutting-edge labs, nanotechnology has an increasingly pervasive place in everyday life. Its ultra-tiny engineered particles are now in as many as 10,000 products. A series by Andrew Schneider of AOL News shows a growing body of research suggests these nanomaterials pose significant and potentially fatal health risks including lung, heart and brain…
Read MoreJoe Mahr and Gerry Smith of the Chicago Tribune did a computer analysis of state police speeding tickets and driving records. They found that nearly two-thirds of the time, people caught going 100 mph or faster were given a special kind of probation that kept the tickets off their driving records. That included those triple-digit…
Read MoreKeeping Secrets, a three-part series by The News & Observer (Raleigh, NC) for Sunshine Week, found North Carolina’s 35-year-old personnel law is among the most secretive in the nation, barring access to disciplinary actions, hiring decisions and employment histories. The series had plenty of examples showing how this secrecy is preventing the public from learning…
Read More