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“Major U.S. banks sought government permission to bring thousands of foreign workers into the country for high-paying jobs even as the system was melting down last year and Americans were getting laid off, according to an Associated Press review of visa applications.” Frank Bass and Rita Beamish of the Associated Press reported that visa applications…
Read More“How much lower can Zimbabwe sink? Chronic food shortages, hyperinflation, a cholera epidemic, people abducted for speaking out against President Robert Mugabe’s regime — all this is the stuff of daily life for ordinary Zimbabweans, as related here by a journalist in Harare, the capital,” begins the latest dispatch from “One Step From Hell.” It’s…
Read MoreThe Atlanta Journal-Constitution‘s Todd Holcomb used Georgia’s public records law to compare recruiting budgets for college football programs. “It has become big business for big-time athletics programs. Each year, they spend more than $500,000 on recruiting, but they make more than $50 million in annual athletic revenue, mostly from football.” The story shows the range,…
Read MoreThe Center for Investigative Reporting files ongoing reports about what viewers don’t see in the ABC reality TV series, “Homeland Security USA,” which G.W. Shultz characterizes as ” ‘Cops’-style, heart-pounding segments of border agents drawing their weapons on a suspect or airport security seizing smuggled narcotics” with an occasional pause “to focus briefly on the…
Read MoreAt the New Haven, Conn., Better Watchdog Workshop, Maurice Tamman of The Wall Street Journal shared his thoughts on why skills in computer-assisted reporting can help strengthen and legitimize a story. At the IRE workshop, which provides journalists with instruction on the tools needed to be better watchdog journalists, Tamman provided participants with an introduction…
Read MoreWorking off a report from Zillow.com stating that 29 percent of homes in the Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue area sold at a loss during the final months of 2008, Karen Gaudette and Justin Mayo of The Seattle Times extended the analysis and traced the depreciation trend back to 2005. They also compiled lists of the cities in Snohomish…
Read MoreNina Bernstein of The New York Times reports that, despite the Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s January 2004 statement that its officers would focus their efforts on detaining illegal immigrants with criminal records, the agency changed its quotas to facilitate the capture of non-criminal illegal immigrants as well. By 2006, only 9 percent of those detained…
Read MoreAn investigation by The San Diego Union-Tribune has found that Elite Racing, a marathon promotion company, has received subsidies from the city of San Diego. According to the article, “The subsidies stem from a nonprofit charity that San Diego-based Elite Racing created that co-hosts the event. It allows the company to cash in on a…
Read MoreThe Sarasota Herald-Tribune reports that ships carrying hundreds of millions of pounds of Chinese-manufactured drywall — enough to potentially construct more than 60,000 homes — unloaded their cargo at two dozen U.S. ports across the country since 2006. Some Chinese drywall, used to make interior walls, has now been linked to the near-complete corrosion of…
Read More“A Hearst Newspapers investigation has found dozens of cases over the past 20 years of local Boy Scout councils logging or selling prime woodlands to big timber interests, developers or others, turning quick money and often doing so instead of seeking ways to preserve such lands.” Since 1990, scouting councils have logged over 34,000 acres,…
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