The early bird deadline for 
The 2025 Freelance Fellowship Recipients
The Des Moines Register used data on driving-related offenses in Iowa to identify 78,000 people who owe at least $500 in fines. Reporter Lee Rood and data analyst Michael Corey found “The outstanding debt that all Iowans owe for everything from overdue speeding tickets to drunk driving fines to law enforcement surcharges is at a…
Read MoreSam Roe of The Chicago Tribune exposes the story of America’s efforts to recover uranium that the U.S. government distributed to other nations in its Cold War-era “Atoms for Peace” program. The enriched uranium, suitable for making bombs, still circulates in politically unstable countries. “Today, roughly 40 tons of the material remains out of U.S.…
Read MoreStephen Henderson, Supreme Court correspondent for McClatchy Newspapers, evaluated the quality of defense lawyering in four states, Mississippi, Georgia, Alabama and Virginia in a three-part series based on in-depth review of 80 cases from 1997 to 2004. By failing to investigate their clients’ histories, lawyers in these 73 cases fell far short of the 20-year-old…
Read MoreEric Nalder and Lewis Kamb of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer expose an explicit email and Internet scandal within the Port of Seattle Police Department. The reporters used public records requests to obtain internal investigation documents and personnel records showing that nearly one-third of the Port’s police force sent, received and exchanged racist, sexist and explicit emails…
Read MoreMc Nelly Torres of the South Florida Sun-Sentinel reported that state inspectors issued 163 citations for violations at nail salons from June 2005 to July 2006, compared to 99 in 2003 to 2004. Torres examined three years of inspection data for salons that received citations from the Florida Department of Business and Professional Regulation and…
Read MoreIn a three-part series, Steve Eder and James Drew of The (Toledo) Blade report that, since early 2004, the Ohio Bureau of Workers’ Compensation has failed to fully investigate allegations of kickbacks and fraud in its managed-care section. The report, “Falling Down on The Job,” is the latest installment in The Blade‘s two-year investigation into…
Read MoreEric Herman, Stephanie Zimmermann and Art Golab of the Chicago Sun-Times investigated a city program that allows residents to request handicapped parking spots near their homes. A computer-assisted analysis found at least 260 dead people on the list of 11,423 participants. “Throughout the summer and fall, the Sun-Times visited the sites of all 260 active…
Read MoreAlan Judd and Andy Miller of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution presented the first in a series of reports on Georgia’s system of state psychiatric hospitals. Reporters used state vital records and death data, autopsy reports and claims filed against the state to flag 115 suspicious deaths among patients in state custody in the past five years.…
Read MoreCharles Piller, Edmund Sanders and Robyn Dixon of the Los Angeles Times explore the investments held by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and found that it “reaps vast profits every year from companies whose actions contradict its mission of improving society in the United States and around the world, particularly the lot of people…
Read MoreSteve Wilson of WXYZ-Detroit looked into Big Three auto executives’ use of corporate jets for personal trips, despite cost-cutting pressures in the industry. The story estimated that non-business travel for a handful of top leaders costs in the neighborhood of $700,000 annually at both Ford and GM.
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