The early bird deadline for 
The 2025 Freelance Fellowship Recipients
In the lead-up to November’s elections, John Ferro of the Poughkeepsie Journal exposes the potential for voting fraud in New York state. The statewide database of registered voters contains the names of nearly 77,000 deceased – including many who cast votes posthumously. “The Journal’s analysis is the first to examine the potential for errors and…
Read MoreShannon Behnken of the Tampa Tribune reports of real estate fraud in the St. Petersberg, FL area. “With three months’ experience, the agent [Dawn L. Molen] who had never listed a home closed her first sale Jan. 27 in a working-class neighborhood. Her buyer paid $45,000 more than the asking price…over the next eight months,…
Read MoreA 2-day series by Greta Guest and Victoria Turk in the Detroit Free Press examined the state of grocery stores in the city of Detroit. While the housing market in downtown Detroit is experiencing growth, a lack of desirable grocery store options is a “nagging problem in terms of the city’s quality of life.” Difficulty…
Read MoreIn response to The Philadelphia Inquirer investigation on the failures of DHS to protect children from abuse — and death — two officials have been dismissed. “Mayor Street forced out two top officials at the city’s child-welfare agency Friday, acknowledging that his administration had not done enough to protect children from being killed by child…
Read MoreBob Egelko of The San Francisco Chronicle reports that the paper has agreed to be held in contempt of court for refusing to disclose its reporters’ [Mark Fainaru-Wada and Lance Williams] sources of grand jury testimony in the BALCO case. This could result in fines of over $500,000. “The Chronicle’s editor, Phil Bronstein, said, ‘While…
Read MoreIn a story for the Tulsa World, Ziva Branstetter used FAADS (Federal Awards Assistance Data System) to identify the amount of federal grants going to Indian tribes and comparing those numbers with gaming revenues. She found that during the three most recent fiscal years of data available, gaming revenues among all tribes nationally increased about…
Read MoreJill Riepenhoff and Mike Wagner of The Columbus Dispatch “collected and analyzed police incident reports to gauge behavior that broke [Big Ten] school rules or criminal laws inside stadiums and to examine police response. More than 4.8 million fans flooded the conference’s 11 football stadiums during the [2005] season.” Of the almost 1400 incidents reported,…
Read MoreAn investigation by Ken Dilanian and John Sullivan of The Philadelphia Inquirer shows gross failures by the Department of Human Services (DHS) led to the brutal deaths of children at the hands of their parents – parents who had been referred to DHS for abusive behavior. “Three years after a string of blunders by DHS…
Read MoreAn investigation by Matt Kelley and Peter Eisler of USA Today shows that “lobbying groups employed 30 family members last year to influence spending bills that their relatives with ties to the House and Senate appropriations committees oversaw or helped write…combined, they generated millions of dollards in fees for themselves or their firms.” USA Today…
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