The early bird deadline for 
The 2025 Freelance Fellowship Recipients
Jonathan Salant of Bloomberg Markets analyzed Federal Election Commission records finding that House Majority Leader Tom Delay “gave more money to U.S. congressional candidates than any lawmaker in the last decade … the Texas representative has contributed $3.5 million to 432 congressional candidates …” After Delay, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi is next in helping…
Read MoreProducer Nishi Gupta and reporter Debbie Dujanovic of KSL-Salt Lake City investigate the rate of disease and death in former narcotics officers who were exposed to chemicals in the meth labs they once were raiding. They found a high risk of cancers, auto-immune diseases and other illnesses in comparison to national statistics. They “discovered 24…
Read MoreJason Kandel of the Los Angeles Daily News obtained overtime expenditures from the Los Angeles Police Department and used Excel to analyze the data. He found that the LAPD has already overspent their overtime budget by $8 million with two months still remaining in the fiscal year. “The Los Angeles Police Department spent $62.8 million…
Read MoreKen Ward Jr. of the Charleston Gazette filed a Freedom of Information Act request to obtain records on two logging contractors shut down for repeated environmental violations. Department of Environmental Protection records “showed that the agency cited Yeager [airport contractors] last month for two violations of its stormwater control permit on the slide repair work.”…
Read MoreJeff Zeleny, Mike Dorning and Michael Tackett of the Chicago Tribune reviewed travel records for Illinois’ congressional delegation, finding that “at least 835 trips taken by either Illinois Congress members or their staff highlight the uneasy intersection between private dollars and public policy that raises questions about whether a special interest group is trying to…
Read MoreKimball Payne and Bob Evans of the Hampton Daily Press uses a large number of documents, maps and thousands of e-mails to investigate a federal highway project that is projected to be completed two years past the original completion date and have an added cost of twice what the Virginia Department of Transportation had projected.…
Read MoreDanny Robbins of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram used the Texas Public Information Act to show that “the Texas A&M University and University of Texas at Austin athletic departments have routinely purchased tens of thousands of dollars worth of dietary supplements labeled as containing ingredients that make them impermissible for distribution to student-athletes under National Collegiate…
Read MoreEric Eyre and Scott Finn of the Charleston Gazette obtained flight records showing that West Virginia homeland security chief Neal Sharp “flew on the state plane or helicopter to attend meetings, scout disaster training sites and inspect emergency equipment” nineteen times in 19 months and chartered five additional private flights, prompting a state investigation. “All…
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