The IRE office will be closed from December 25th to January 5th.
Blog
Please join us on Thursday, December 15 at The Boathouse at Confluence Park, beginning at 5:30 pm to welcome new IRE Executive Director Doug Haddix. We’re blessed to have such a great resource living in our backyard. You don’t need to be a member to attend – only a journalist with a passion for watchdog…
Read MoreOne of the biggest scoops this election cycle came from Washington Post reporter David Fahrenthold. His relentless shoe-leather reporting – and list making – revealed that Donald Trump wasn’t exactly the philanthropist he was claiming to be on the campaign trail. Instead of donating his own money to charity, Trump would give away or spend dollars donated…
Read MoreThe following is a transcript of the IRE Radio Podcast episode “Making a List, Checking it Twice.” The audio version is available at: http://bit.ly/2gtrlaQ <<Begin Daniela Vidal narration>> 2016 brought us one of the most interesting election seasons in American history. President-elect Donald Trump came out on top, basing his qualifications in part on his…
Read MoreHow to enter the IRE Awards from IRE/NICAR on Vimeo. It’s time to gather your best stories of the year! The 2016 IRE Awards contest is now open for submissions, and we can’t wait to see what you’ve done. Please consider entering your best investigative work into the 2016 IRE Awards contest. Among the most…
Read MoreThree journalists have been awarded Total Newsroom Training Fellowships for IRE’s data analysis boot camp in January. The fellowship is offered to alumni of the TNT program, which provides intense, in-house training for small and medium-sized newsrooms dedicated to watchdog journalism. TNT alumni are still encouraged to apply for three remaining fellowships for the boot camp in March. The fellowships…
Read MoreBy Amy Pyle Editor’s Note: This article first ran on Nov. 21, 2016 on the Columbia Journalism Review’s website. I was jolted awake, or rather I was jolted awake, by the Northridge Earthquake on January 17, 1994. I drove bleary-eyed down the 210 freeway to the 118, careening off expansion joints that had become steps. Less than…
Read MoreIf you’re listening to this podcast, you’re affected by the topic of our show today. The phone, computer or tablet you’re using to play this episode is likely powered by a lithium-ion battery. And one of the main ingredients in those batteries is cobalt. Much of our cobalt comes from the Congo, where miners often…
Read MoreBy Kevin Deutsch Editor’s Note: This article first ran on Nov. 16, 2016 on the Columbia Journalism Review’s website. During a career that’s spanned three and a half decades, Ted Conover has guarded hardened criminals in Sing Sing, snuck across the US border with Mexican immigrants, inspected poultry as a USDA employee, and roamed the…
Read MoreBy Steve Weinberg One of the most important individuals to IRE’s history never published an investigative project. Nor was she a newsroom editor, or a big-money donor. Jan Colbert died Nov. 5, 2016, after struggling for two decades with cancer. From 1983-1990, Jan served as IRE’s associate director, then briefly as executive director before shifting over…
Read MoreHow many people in the U.S. die of antibiotic-resistant infections? It seems like a simple question. But when a team of journalists from Reuters set out to gather the numbers, they realized that the answer would be anything but straightforward. They found out no one was properly keeping track of how many people die from…
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