The early bird deadline for 
The 2025 Freelance Fellowship Recipients
The Center for Public Integrity used federal campaign data to show that “in the 2004 federal races, more than $1.78 billion flowed through a professional corps of consultants whose influence plays an important, though largely unexamined, role in the unrelenting escalation of campaign spending.” John Perry and Agustin Armendariz did the data analysis for the…
Read MoreIn a follow-up to an earlier story on credit card abuse within the Dallas Independent School District, Kent Fischer and Molly Motley Blythe of The Dallas Morning News report that the money used to pay for many of the questionable purchases came from federal grants. “The Dallas Independent School District, already battered by a spate…
Read MoreBrian Ross and Eric Longabardi report for ABC News that foreign student pilots are still finding their way into American flight schools despite strict regulations set in place following 9/11. “Under the program, no foreign national can receive flight training in the United States without approval from the Transportation Security Administration.” But the policy is…
Read MoreMichelle Breidenbach of The (Syracuse, NY) Post-Standard shows how hundreds of New York companies pulled accounting gimmicks and exploited a loophole in the state law to collect millions of dollars in tax breaks. The companies created new corporations and passed themselves off as new on paper, thus becoming eligible for tax breaks intended for businesses…
Read MoreKevin Sack and Craig Pyes, special to The Los Angeles Times, report on misconduct by U.S. Special Forces in Afganistan. On two separate occasions, the Special Forces team concealed the death of Afgan detainees. “What distinguishes these two fatalities from scores of other questionable deaths in U.S. custody is that they were successfully concealed
Read MoreA series by William Glaberson of The New York Times exposes the gross abuse of power by “part-times justices” across the state of New York. The New York Times did a one-year investigation of these town and village courts presided over by judges who have no legal pedigree – including some with no more than…
Read MoreSharon Theimer of the Associated Press reports that recently released Secret Service visitor logs reveal extensive “inside access” to presidential aides by Grover Norquist and Ralph Reed, both of whom are linked to Jack Abramoff. The records indicate at least 115 appointments since 2001, some lasting upwards of 12 hours. The release of the records…
Read MoreMichele Gillen of Miami’s CBS4 exposes the inhumane conditions of mentally-ill accused criminals being held in the Miami-Dade pre-trial detention center. The conditions are “morally incomprehensible” – multiple inmates share cells intended for a single prisoner; people sleep on floors covered in urine and feces; inmates are allowed out of their cells for only 30…
Read MoreTroy Anderson of the LA Daily News reports on the Los Angeles County “Fab Five” – the five members of the county Board of Supervisiors. “With salaries and benefits that can reach $185,232 a year, each of the five members of the county Board of Supervisors also controls a $3.2 million annual operating budget and…
Read MoreKatie Thomas, Tom McGinty and Andrew Strickler of Newsday used IRS migration data to show that "Long Islanders ... are leaving the region in growing numbers, and while traditional destinations such as Palm Beach, Fla., and Fort Lauderdale are still popular, many are bypassing those locations for fast-growing areas such as North Carolina and Tampa,…
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