The early bird deadline for 
The 2025 Freelance Fellowship Recipients
Megan Boldt, MaryJo Sylwester, Meggen Lindsay and Doug Belden of St. Paul Pioneer Press analyzed three years of test scores from all 731 Minnesota elementary schools and found that 13 high-poverty schools were “doing better than predicted and seem to have found a way to overcome education’s biggest challenge — teaching high numbers of poor…
Read MoreFarmsubsidy.org has released new data on farm subsidy payments, with an analysis by Nils Mulvad, co-founder of farmsubsidy.org and director of the Danish International Center for Analytical Reporting, analyzed new data on farm subsidy payments in Denmark in 2005 and found that “the new Single Farm Payment Scheme has dramatically increased the number of farm…
Read MoreRick Anderson of the Seattle Weekly reviewed state files and revealed Washington consumer complaints about funeral homes and cemeteries. Consumers were “being ‘penalized’ by funeral homes for buying coffins elsewhere.” There were “complaints about bodies buried in the wrong graves, cremated when they should have been planted, or occupying plots that have been resold” and…
Read MoreThe Arizona Republic has published a package of stories, photos and audio in remembrance of the 30th anniversary of the bombing that killed reporter Don Bolles. The bombing and Bolles’ death 11 days later was the catalyst for the Arizona Project, an important event that had a hand in shaping IRE’s early years. The present-day…
Read MoreNancy Martinez and Sarah Viren of the Corpus Christi Caller-Times reviewed a database from the state Attorney General of in-custody deaths and found a lack of records of excessive force complaints and inconsistencies in the records that did exist. “No reports are sent outside the department unless someone dies, no agency collects comparable data on…
Read MoreThomas Hargrove of Scripps Howard News Service studied records provided by the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration and found “deaths in U.S. motorcycle crashes have nearly doubled in a decade, mounting to 4,000 annually, as more states have repealed mandatory helmet safety laws.” The analysis of 2004 federal accident data showed that “the per capita…
Read MoreJohn Tedesco of the San Antonio Express-News examined the Texas Racing Commission’s database of horse injuries, which never had been analyzed by outsiders, and found that “at the state’s five licensed tracks, Marsh and other veterinarians with the Texas Racing Commission have euthanized or documented the deaths of 300 horses in the past five years,…
Read MoreKathleen Chapman of The Palm Beach Post investigated the emergency food-stamp program in Florida after Hurricane Wilma and found that nearly 700,000 Floridians, many of whom were not really too poor to buy food, got in line for the stamps. “Florida didn’t require proof of income to get the payments, and the state hasn’t completed…
Read MoreKaren Eschbacher of The (Quincy, Mass.) Patriot Ledger found that most school districts on the South Shore hire private contractors to provide bus service for students. “Several South Shore communities fail to run background checks on school bus drivers, and others can’t even produce the names of people allowed behind the wheel.” “While state laws…
Read MoreNancy Amons of WSMV-Nashville analyzed truck accident reports statewide over the past five years and found that “64 crashes where a trucker who was listed as ‘apparently asleep’ injured or killed someone. In 70 percent of those cases, the trucker never got a ticket.” Analysis of another database of Department of Safety inspection reports found…
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