IRE Journal
From the Editor: Welcome to the “new” IRE Journal
From the Editor: Welcome to the “new” IRE Journal By Adam Rhodes, IRE & NICAR This isn’t going to be a “things I’m thankful for” essay, I swear. But I am lucky to have a lot to be thankful for. My sweet albeit ornery beagle, a healthy family and trusted friends, a steady income, Ariana…
Read MoreWhiplash from the backlash: the state of DBEI work in newsrooms in 2025
By Francisco Vara-Orta, IRE & NICAR For anyone who values diversity, belonging, equity and inclusion, it would be an understatement to say this year has taken a toll on those who rely on these principles and champion them. But that doesn’t mean we give up the fight. After the 2024 presidential election results, a rollercoaster…
Read MoreInside The New York Times’s A.I. toolkit
Inside The New York Times’s A.I. toolkit By Duy Nguyen, The New York Times; Illustration by Juliana Castro Varón, The New York Times The daily reality of journalism often involves painstaking work that, while important, has little to do with breaking a story. It’s the mundane task of sifting through thousands of documents, the repetitive…
Read MoreCounting the dead: Massive public records effort shows recklessness in police chases
By Jennifer Gollan & Susie Neilson, San Francisco Chronicle Police pursuits are glamorized on television news and in video games. But the causes and aftermaths of these chases receive little public attention. Our investigation shined a spotlight on the reckless decisions that often set pursuits in motion and on the bystanders and passengers they’ve killed.…
Read MoreCrossing borders: how an international team uncovered deadly cargo trips across the U.S. and Mexico
By Ronny Rojas, Noticias Telemundo; Brenda Medina, ICIJ; Àngela Cantador, CLIP In 2023, while covering the death of 53 undocumented migrants who were trapped in a cargo truck in San Antonio, Texas, Noticias Telemundo journalists put a call-out in their stories and social media platforms asking immigrants who had traveled in similar conditions to share…
Read MoreHow one reporter uncovered how police let a serial sexual predator walk free
By Jeremy Finley, WSMV I have a complicated relationship with tips. When I’m juggling a data project, a documentary, anchoring a nightly newscast and weekly reporting, they seem to spill into my hands like quarters from an old slot machine. And I complain, I can’t keep up with all this. But when everything falls apart—as…
Read MoreDrained: Exposing Houston’s Water Problem
By Amy Davis & Andrea Slaydon, KPRC 2 I’ll never forget watching 95-year-old Ray Dittmar navigate his uneven lawn with a walker, getting down on his hands and knees to read his own water meter. He called me when the city of Houston told him he had used 111,000 gallons of water in one month.…
Read More‘Sunshine is the best antiseptic:’ How AL.com helped free hundreds behind bars
By Challen Stephens & Ivana Hrynkiw, AL.com It’s not easy to make a dent when reporting on Alabama prisons. The system is jam-packed, cruel and deadly. Reform tends to happen only when the state is forced by the courts. But in 2024, something surprising happened. After we began reporting on the bottleneck at the state…
Read MoreMisconduct and millions of dollars: Uncovering secret deals in California’s police termination records
By Katey Rusch, UC Berkeley’s Investigative Reporting Program Since we exposed the widespread use of secret deals to bury police officers’ misconduct in California, we’ve been asked the same question repeatedly: How did you know these agreements existed when they were designed to evade detection? The honest answer is that it happened by accident. In…
Read MoreBehind the scenes: The Tenant Trap
By Alejandra Cancino & Maya Dukmasova, Injustice Watch On paper, Chicago is a “tenant-friendly” town. This project began more than a decade ago when Maya Dukmasova started requesting data on eviction lawsuits from the Cook County Circuit Court. Court records are public, but in order to analyze the data, Maya needed bulk, case-level information in…
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