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“More than $800 million in student fees and university subsidies are propping up athletic programs at the nation’s top sports colleges, including hundreds of millions in the richest conferences,” according to a report by Jack Gillum, Jodi Upton and Steve Berkowitz of USA Today. At the same time, many of these school are facing financial…
Read MoreThe deadline for submitting entries for the IRE Awards is this Friday, January 15. All entries must be postmarked by midnight on Friday. As you review work from 2009, don’t forget that we have added a new category to the contest that honors breaking news investigations. It is open to all journalists, regardless of media…
Read MoreKPCC.org, the Web site for Southern California Public Radio, investigated allegations of inmate mistreatment at the California Institution for Men in Chino following a bloody 11-hour riot Aug. 8, 2009. The riot left some 200 men injured. It took authorities until sunrise to contain the violence. In interviews and in letters obtained by KPCC, inmates…
Read MoreChuck Neubauer of The Washington Times reports that “superlobbyist” Paul Magliocchetti “is now the focus of a federal investigation into whether he made illegal campaign contributions by reimbursing people, or ‘straw donors,’ who made contributions in their names to his favored candidates – helping the lobbyist avoid federal limits on his personal donations.“
Read MoreWill Evans of California Watch found large corporations in California are getting hundreds of millions of dollars in federal stimulus dollars despite a history of environmental violations and a host of other legal problems.
Read MoreIn The Washington Post’s continuing investigative series on lapses in subway safety, the paper reported that independent safety inspectors — banned from Metro tracks until a Post exposé in November — returned to the rails in December to assess whether the transit agency was following rules meant to protect its own workers. During the inspection,…
Read MoreA two-part report by The Denver Post examines how the federal and state bank regulatory system collapsed in the last decade, failing to catch fraud at New Frontier Bank, one of the costliest bank failures in the country in 2009. A graphic depicts the red flags at New Frontier Bank, comparing performance data with other…
Read MoreA five day series by Martha Mendoza and Margie Mason of The Associated Press explores the global issue of drug resistance, looking at where and how it has emerged and what can be done. The series examines the overuse and misuse of drugs, leading to drug-resistant strains of diseases, highlighted by the first case in…
Read MoreFor two years, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reporter John Diedrich has been seeking documents from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) on a local gun store that has been the subject of controversy. Despite heavy redactions by the agency, and differing responses to various FOIA requests, Diedrich was able to confirm the ATF…
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