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Ben 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 MoreA two-part series by Scott Powers of The Orlando Sentinel explored personal injury litigation against the big Florida theme parks, showing what happens when visitors get hurt and then sue. The findings show ride-related lawsuits at Walt Disney World, SeaWorld, Universal Orlando and Busch Gardens rarely shed light on whether the rides actually hurt anyone.…
Read MoreThe latest installment of “Tobacco Underground,” an investigation by the Center for Public Integrity’s International Consortium of Investigative Journalists exposes how U.S. and Canadian Indian tribes and organized crime gangs are behind a $1 billion black market in smuggled cigarettes in Canada. “Over the last six years, as Ottawa and provincial governments began hiking tobacco…
Read MoreThe Red River in Fargo, N.D., has reached record heights and is still rising. IRE has compiled a list of resources to help you cover this flood, localize the story for your area and assess whether your community is prepared for a similar disaster. Flooding is nothing new to the Midwest. Last year Cedar Rapids,…
Read MoreFor an investigation of foreclosure rescue schemes, the San Diego Union-Tribune analyzed all quitclaim deeds filed in San Diego County between January 2007 and October 2008. The investigation led reporter Eleanor Yang Su to Apocalypse and Amerisian trusts, which are ran by convicted felon Edmundo Rubi. According to the article, “In some operations, homeowners quitclaimed…
Read MoreMatthew Hendrickson wrote a three-part series showing how Chicago children continue to be harmed by lead poisoning at alarming rates because of bureaucratic missteps — from kids being screened late to frustrated inspectors not having correct street addresses when tracking down those most at risk. Hendrickson also tested soil samples and found troubling amounts of…
Read MoreTisha Thompson at WTTG-Washington, D.C., found more than one-third of federal judges are at least 70 years old, the age at which the majority of states require their judges to retire. One judge is more than 101 years old and still hearing a full case load. Thompson created an interactive Web site with state-by-state comparisons…
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