The IRE office will be closed from December 25th to January 5th.
Blog
Medication errors raise questions about patient safety at a New Jersey psychiatric hospital, according to an Asbury Park Press report by Jean Mikle. A review of hundreds of pages of Ancora medication safety and error reports by the Press found troubling patterns of mistakes and omissions at the facility, which has about 600 patients. The…
Read MoreSeymour Hersh has joined the lineup of speakers at the 2009 IRE Conference. Hersh, a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter who has exposed scandals and cover-ups for decades — from the Mai Lai massacre in Vietnam to Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq — joins a strong group of speakers that also includes Bob Woodward of The…
Read MoreSteven Greenhouse of The New York Times reports on an investigation into New York state’s workers’ compensation system uncovering delays, fraudulent claims, and questionable rulings. Employees feel the system is trying to avoid paying out on claims, while employers believe fraudulent claims are rampant. “A century ago, when the state created its workers’ compensation system,…
Read MoreAn ABC News investigation by Asa Eslocker, Joseph Rhee and Eric Longabardi examined the safety of the 55-year-old seaplane used by Red Bull to promote its energy drink across the country. The plane was decommissioned by the Coast Guard in 1976, but “it flies over the heads of hundreds of thousands of people a year…
Read MoreIn a five-month investigation, The Courier-Journal in Louisville, Ky., looked at court attendance among police officers. Reporters Jason Riley and R.G. Dunlop found, “More than 600 defendants facing such felony charges as drug dealing, robbery, burglary and assault were set free in 2007 because the Louisville Metro Police officers who arrested them failed to appear…
Read MoreAt a time when the U.S. Postal Service is experiencing a financial crisis, it purchased a $1.2 million mansion in South Carolina to relocate an employee. The employee, who applied for the new job — a mid-level manager position — qualified for the purchase under the Postal Service’s relocation policy. It turns out this was…
Read MoreBen Poston and Tom Held of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel found that a vast majority of the Wisconsin bridges awarded $15.8 million of construction money in the first wave of federal stimulus funding carry fewer than 1,000 vehicles a day. A dozen of those get less than 100 cars a day. For the story, Poston…
Read MoreEditor’s note: Rich Exner of The (Cleveland) Plain Dealer attended IRE’s Advanced Statistics Boot Camp at Arizona State University Feb. 6-8. Here’s his take on the practical application of the training: I learned after attending IRE’s Mapping Boot Camp a couple of years ago that the best way to retain the new techniques crammed into…
Read MoreA report by Brad Heath of USA Today reveals that the nation’s immigration courts “are now so clogged that nearly 90,000 people accused of being in the United States illegally waited at least two years for a judge to decide whether they must leave, one of the last bottlenecks in a push to more strictly…
Read MoreInvestigations that exposed local government corruption from New Orleans to Detroit, human-rights abuses by the federal government and international organized crime are among the work honored in the 2008 Investigative Reporters and Editors Awards. This year’s top prize, the IRE Medal, was given to WWL-New Orleans for its dogged rolling investigation of a city-run housing…
Read More