IRE Journal

By Sukey Lewis & Julie Small, KQED This investigation began with a striking data finding. In analyzing newly accessible records obtained through California’s landmark police transparency law, our reporting team discovered that correctional officers at California State Prison, Sacramento — also known as New Folsom — were using serious force at three times the rate…

By Lori Jane Gliha and Brittany Freeman, Scripps News When a gunman killed 18 people during a shooting spree in Lewiston, Maine in October 2023, our team did what many reporters might do in a breaking news situation: we asked a ton of questions, and we filed open records requests for anything that might give…

By Kathy Best, Howard Center for Investigative Journalism This is a story of AI-assisted redemption.  In 1999, two enterprising Congressional Quarterly reporters wanted to show the link between congressional trips and the private interests that financed them. They used a portable scanner to make copies of travel reports and spent weeks inputting information by hand…

Twelve years ago, I was stomping through the corridors of the Pentagon as a military beat reporter for The Washington Post. At the Defense Department, there’s always a deluge of potential news stories and international incidents to monitor. The trick is figuring out which ones will keep your editors happy, which ones you can safely…

By Nadia Hamdan, Reveal Alexia Fernández Campbell was in Baltimore when she got the news.  It was March and she was attending the NICAR 2024 conference, where her colleague, Pratheek Rebala, would be on a panel to talk about the big project they had been working on together, “Forty Acres and a Lie.” At the…

By Richard Martin, The Baltimore Banner On March 26, 2024, the cargo ship Dali lost power while leaving the Port of Baltimore and slammed into a critical support pier of the Francis Scott Key Bridge. It was 1:24 a.m., and within seconds the bridge crumpled into the cold Patapsco River, sending six construction workers working…