The IRE office will be closed from December 25th to January 5th.
Blog
An investigation by Blake Morrison and Peter Eisler of USA Today illustrates failures in food safety programs as schools unknowingly continued to receive food from suppliers with a history of tainted products. Del Rey Tortilleria of Chicago was linked to illness outbreaks at over a dozen schools between 2003 and 2007. “And in a 2006…
Read MoreThrough the Freedom of Information Act, CUNY graduate student Valerie Lapinski was able to obtain previously unreleased FBI file of Studs Terkel. The file revealed that the agency suspected Terkel was a Communist. “The 269-page paper trail spans 1945 to 1990 – covering everything from Terkel’s McCarthy-era blacklisting to his involvement with Paul Robeson and…
Read MoreUsing Oklahoma Lottery Commission sales data and U.S. Census Bureau data, the Tulsa World found that some of Tulsa County’s poorest areas spend the most money on lottery tickets per capita, according to a report by Gavin Off. An interactive map showing income vs. lottery spending can be found here.
Read MoreBy Jaimi Dowdell IRE Training Director Just as schools run students through drills for tornadoes and fires, journalists need to do drills to be prepared. One way to incorporate quick-hit, investigative techniques into your daily reporting is to practice and know what you and your newsroom are going to do when faced with breaking news,…
Read MoreWe’d like to thank everyone who helped make IRE’s membership drive a success and announce the winners in the drawing. More than 440 people joined IRE, renewed expired memberships or signed on for another year during October. We also received several thousand dollars in donations, made by those of you who chose to offer additional…
Read MoreMc Nelly Torres, a freelance journalist, and Omaya Sosa Pascual, of El Centro Periodistico Investigativo de Puerto Rico, report decades of environmental violations, financial distress and neglect behind the company that owns the refinery where the Oct. 23 deadly explosion took place in Puerto Rico. The stories, a collaboration between journalists in Miami and Puerto…
Read MoreToday is the anniversary of the murder of El Diario de Juarez’ top crime reporter Armando “Choco” Rodriguez. At noon, his fellow journalists in Ciudad Juarez, who have attempted to continue his work in documenting the relentless violence in the largest US-Mexico border city, are gathering to remember him on the Plaza of the Journalist.…
Read MorePfizer and Lilly lead a parade of U.S. companies that have paid $7 billion in penalties after promoting drugs for uses not approved by the FDA, according to a report by David Evans for the December issue of Bloomberg Markets. This unlawful behavior may not end until prosecutors force a drug company into bankruptcy.
Read MoreAram Roston of The Nation reports hundreds of millions of American tax dollars are going directly to Taliban-affiliated insurgents in Afghanistan. According to the article, US military officials in Kabul estimate the U.S. pays about 10 percent of the Pentagon’s logistics contracts to insurgents. One source told Roston the payments are necessary “because none of…
Read MoreGreat investigative work is often done in the days, or even hours, following a breaking news event. The IRE Awards have often honored such work, and now we are pleased to introduce a new category dedicated to such efforts. The Breaking News Investigations category spotlights outstanding investigative work done following a news event or development,…
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