The early bird deadline for 
The 2025 Freelance Fellowship Recipients
Mark Scolforo of The Associated Press has a four-part series on Pennsylvania’s county prisons, finding that “many local jails are struggling to meet even minimum standards for safety, housing, food quality and medical care.” The AP obtained state inspection reports under Pennsylvania’s public records law; the jails “are not required to make public their annual…
Read MorePatrick McGreevy of the Los Angeles Times reports the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, which supplies and promotes tap water to the city, spent $31,160 for bottled water. Citywide, city officials spent $88,900 on bottled water, “despite a 1995 directive by former Mayor Richard Riordan that said: The city’s tap water satisfies most…
Read MoreDavid E. Kaplan of U.S. News & World Report finds the U.S. government has been monitoring more than 100 “Muslim sites in the Washington, D.C., area, including mosques, homes, businesses, and warehouses, plus similar sites in at least five other cities” since 9/11 in search of a terrorist nuclear bomb. As part of the top-secret…
Read MoreIRE reminds Extra! Extra! readers that the postmark deadline for entering the IRE Awards is fast approaching — Jan. 9, 2006. The IRE Awards recognize the best investigative reporting across print, broadcast and online categories. Don’t let your best work go unnoticed! With recent newsroom cost-cutting efforts, it’s best not to count on someone else…
Read MoreFred Schulte of The (Baltimore) Sun used state records to show that “Maryland’s vow to safeguard patients has been undercut by breakdowns in the state system established to oversee doctors.” In a three-part series, Schulte writes that more than 120 doctors have been the subject of four or five malpractice claims and that the disciplinary…
Read MoreBrittany Wallman and Jeremy Milarsky of the South Florida Sun-Sentinel analyzed hurricane damage reports to show that in Broward County, “condos and apartments were hit the hardest, accounting for 55 percent of the buildings declared uninhabitable. Mobile homes made up 28 percent of seriously damaged structures. Houses fared the best. Only 42 were deemed uninhabitable,…
Read MoreRon Fonger of The Flint Journal used Michigan’s Freedom of Information Act to show that Genessee County employees who qualify for additional pay based on length of service “cost county taxpayers $1.89 million” in the past fiscal year. “That’s extra pay on top of negotiated across-the-board raises or individual ’step’ raises that also come with…
Read MoreLeslie Eaton and Ron Nixon of The New York Times used federal data to show the pace of homeowner loans in the Gulf Coast is lagging. “The Small Business Administration, which runs the federal government’s main disaster recovery program for both businesses and homeowners, has processed only a third of the 276,000 home loan applications…
Read MoreRichard Lardner and Doug Stanley of The Tampa Tribune report at least 50 veterans who committed homicides in civilian life are interred at Florida National Cemetery, “the final resting place for tens of thousands of military veterans,” according to the paper’s analysis of cemetery and prison records. The paper reports Congress is expected to pass…
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