The early bird deadline for 
The 2025 Freelance Fellowship Recipients
Andrew McIntosh of The Sacramento Bee reports on a real estate transaction by the city of Sacramento which netted an Orange County developer nearly $1 million. In failing to get the details on the property’s sale history, the city ended up paying a record price for the land – $218 per square foot when similar…
Read MoreOscar Corral of The Miami Herald reports that at least 10 South Florida journalists, including three from El Nuevo Herald, received regular payments from the U.S. government for programs on Radio Martí and TV Martí, two broadcasters aimed at undermining the communist government of Fidel Castro. The payments totaled thousands of dollars over several years.
Read MoreIn light of the fifth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks on the U.S., several papers have run stories based on the data tracking how homeland security money has been spent in the last 5 years. Some of these include: “9/11 cash beefs up region” The Cincinnati Enquirer “Post-9/11 funds often used for routine items” Portland…
Read MoreIn a series for the The Daily Herald (Elgin, IL), Patrick Garmoe reports on the threat of water shortages in the several Chicago counties in the coming years due to suburban growth placing stresses on natural resources. “McHenry County’s Groundwater Resources Management Plan predicts the county’s population growth, and corresponding surge in water demand, will…
Read MoreAn investigative story by Daniel J. Chacón of The Rocky Mountain News examined the number of committee meeting absences among Denver City Council members. The newspaper went through the minutes of hundreds of meetings to determine the number of meetings each member was supposed to attend and how many each missed since mid-2003, when the…
Read MoreThe Charleston Sunday Gazette-Mail‘s Ken Ward Jr. reports that a federal-state probe has found out why two coal miners died in a January fire at a Massey Energy mine in Logan County, W.Va. Contrary to federal law, the Aracoma Alma No. 1 Mine’s primary escape tunnel was not totally blocked off from a conveyor belt…
Read MoreSt. Petersburg Times reporter Sydney Freedberg, with CAR analysis from Connie Humburg and research from Carolyn Edds, investigated the dealings of the Orlando-based Enterprise Florida — “a public-private partnership that helps determine where incentive money gets spent to create jobs in the state” — and found questionable dealings. Their “investigation shows that a corporate seat…
Read MoreAndrew Tangel and Mike Chalmers of The (Wilmington, Del.) News Journal found that sex offenders in the state of Delaware have been inadequately monitored. By mapping “the addresses of more than 1,200 moderate- and high-risk sex offenders, 1,900 child care centers and 350 public and private schools“, Tangel and Chalmers found hundreds of instances where…
Read MoreMichael Fabey of Aerospace Daily reported that while aviation-related deaths have decreased, serious accidents have seen a dramatic increase in 2006 over the past three-year period. Analysis of the Army’s aircraft records database revealed this trend. “The largest increase, percentage-wise, has been in the number of incidents involving unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) – which only…
Read MoreJonathan D. Glater of The New York Times reports that, as part of post-9/11 counterterrorism efforts, that Federal Education Department shared personal information obtained on student loan applications with the FBI. “Under the program, called Project Strikeback, the Education Department received names from the F.B.I. and checked them against its student aid database, forwarding information…Neither…
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