The IRE office will be closed from December 25th to January 5th.
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“Hackensack University Medical Center has pulled advertisements from North Jersey Media Group, publisher of The Record, and has banned the newspaper from hospital property following publication of a story about its governing board,” reports Mary Jo Layton of NorthJersey.com. The article addressed questionable practices of the hospital’s board members and trustees.
Read MoreThe San Francisco Chronicle and The Chauncey Bailey Project report that Yusuf Ali Bey IV, leader of the defunct Your Black Muslim Bakery, was indicted by an Alameda County grand jury. “Prosecutors are likely to bring the case with special circumstances – allowing them to seek the death penalty against Bey IV, 23. He allegedly…
Read MoreThe Fayetteville Observer investigated a police department’s mishandling of a child abuse case. The department’s actions ultimately led to its loss of felony arrest powers, scrutiny from the Cumberland County district attorney and a grand jury probe of corruption. The death of 3-year-old Anijah Burr had never been reported and was kept hidden behind a…
Read MoreBreaking the story that ultimately led to the resignation and jailing of former Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick required basic watchdog reporting, according to Pulitzer Prize winner Jim Schaefer of the Detroit Free Press. “This was not some miracle story. It was basic watchdog reporting,” Schaefer told nearly 70 attendees during a Better Watchdog Workshop at…
Read MoreNational Public Radio combined the Federal Aviation Administration’s wildlife-strike reports with airport activity figures to calculate airport “strike rates,” an industry measure that is not publicly available and that standardizes bird strikes according to the amount of traffic at an airport. They also provided an interactive map for Web users to find out strike rates…
Read MoreAn investigation by Matt Dixon of The Villages Daily Sun (The Villages, Fla.) revealed that fire hydrants in Sumter County have not been regularly inspected. A request for maintenance records by the paper revealed that none existed. Municipalities county-wide had been under the impression that the county was responsible for the maintenance of fire hydrants. …
Read More“Students in the region’s poorest neighborhoods are nearly twice as likely to have a new or second-year teacher as those in the wealthiest, a Washington Post analysis has found. The pattern means some of the neediest students attend schools that double as teacher training grounds.” University of Virginia economist James Wyckoff described this trend as…
Read MoreWendy Ruderman and Barbara Laker of the Philadelphia Daily News report that, “Again and again, supervisors in the Philadelphia Police Narcotics Field Unit signed off on cookie-cutter applications for search warrants, which are now the subject of an expanding FBI and police Internal Affairs Bureau investigation.” The article is part of “Tainted Justice,” a series…
Read MoreThe IRE Conference is quickly approaching! This year’s program offers essential tips, advice and strategies for investigating the biggest stories of the day, and we want as many people as possible to be able to attend. The conference hotel is the Baltimore Marriott Waterfront, and it’s a great place to stay because you are able…
Read MoreTony Kennedy and Paul McEnroe of the Star Tribune in Minneapolis wrote a four-part narrative investigation, “The Informant,” to chronicle a public corruption probe of Minneapolis police. Federal agents and the Minneapolis Police Department launched the investigation in late 2006 after an informant’s tip alleging that police officers were providing gang leaders with confidential police…
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