The early bird deadline for 
The 2025 Freelance Fellowship Recipients
A mortgage scam has deceived homeowners in 27 states, including at least 17 in New Jersey. Jason Method of the (Neptune, N.J.) Asbury Park Press investigated the fraud, in which a company contacted homeowners who had been struggling to make their payments. The company promised them a deal: An investor would temporarily buy they property…
Read MoreIn an ongoing investigation, Jeff Pillets of The Record in Bergen County, N.J., uncovered how a taxpayer-supported plan to reclaim the North Jersey Meadowlands instead reopened the infamous garbage dumps to millions of cubic yards of contaminated waste. A review of some 10,000 pages of state documents revealed that the site’s developers won a string…
Read MoreThe Washington Post‘s Edward Cody reports on the case of Pang Jiaoming, a reporter in China who lost his job in the wake of publishing investigative stories “reporting that substandard coal ash was being used in construction of a showcase railroad, the $12 billion high-speed line running 500 miles.” The Post says that due to…
Read MoreStacy Warden of the Chi-town Daily News investigated questionable policies in the Chicago Transportation Authority’s pension fund, raising questions about CTA’s claim that state funding policies had caused its current financial crisis. “Taking the first steps toward repairing the agency’s pension fund, along with paying rapidly increasing employee wages and health care costs, will cost…
Read MoreHundreds of miles of South Carolina rivers are tainted with mercury, and the state warns people not to eat fish caught in some of these waterways. But no one had checked to see if the mercury was harming humans until The Post and Courier in Charleston had tests conducted on people who eat the fish…
Read MoreAnalyzing state data on hunting licenses, Ben Poston of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel found that dozens of convicted felons in Wisconsin were issued gun-deer hunting licenses last year despite a state law that bans them for life from possessing firearms. Felons with armed robbery, rape and weapons convictions all bought gun-deer licenses in Wisconsin in…
Read MoreA collaborative six-month investigation by the Center for Investigative Reporting and Salon.com details the failings of whistleblower courts, which are intended to protect employees who speak out against corruption and abuses in government agencies. Instead, this forum is used to punish those who speak out for the public good. The investigation “found that federal whistle-blowers…
Read MoreBrad Branan of The Fresno Bee looked at federal highway safety data to find that the majority of fatal accidents in the San Joaquin Valley occur on rural roads. “These roads are riskier than city roads, in part because motorists travel them at higher speeds. But the central San Joaquin Valley faces additional problems, including…
Read MoreMatt McKinney and Glenn Howatt of The Star Tribune report that millions in farm subsidies are being paid to people who live in urban areas, including some of the toniest neighborhoods of Minneapolis-St. Paul. “The flow of federal largesse comes thanks to rules that allow landowners — including some 2,000 in the metro area —…
Read MoreAn investigation by The Sacramento Bee’s Terri Handy and Phillip Reese shows that former NBA star Kevin Johnson is responsible for a slew of neglected properties in the downtrodden area of Oak Park where his investments have been widely publicized and praised. “Within a two-mile radius, a Bee investigation found, half of the 37 parcels…
Read More