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Cuomo administration maintains secrecy, uses private email for official business

Some New York state officials are using private email accounts to conduct official business. One reporter at ProPublica received an email from Howard Glaser, director of state operations and a top adviser to New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, regarding an open records request. This email was sent from Glaser’s personal email account. But later, when the…

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Extra Extra Monday: Student housing deaths, phantom workers, treatment of the terminally ill

Shadow Campus:  A house jammed with students, a life of promise lost | The Boston Globe Boston, defined in large measure by the students who flock to it, allows these eager newcomers to be put at risk in overcrowded houses that serve as shoddy substitutes for modern dorms. Such illegal overcrowding is rampant in student…

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IRE Preview: Learn to detect corporate fraud with tips from a crook and a sleuth

Leading up the IRE Conference, the Donald W. Reynolds National Center for Business Journalism will offer a free pre-conference workshop from 1:30-5 p.m. on Wednesday, June 25. Attendees will learn the fundamental methods for inspecting public filings for corporate fraud. The information gained in this session will allow reporters to spot red flags in corporate disclosures and…

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College sports revenue goes up despite recession

Despite the economic downturn, which saw a 1.3 percent decrease in the median salary of American households, sports revenue at public colleges and universities increased by 32 percent between 2008 and 2013. Spending on coaches salaries increased by 45 percent.  ESPN’s “Outside the Lines” took a look at the numbers and broke them down in a…

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Investigating money in politics on foot and online

By George Varney Fredreka Schouten presented a campaign finance panel at the 2014 CAR Conference in Baltimore with fellow USA TODAY reporter Chris Schnaars and AP reporter Jack Gillum. The panel focused on different techniques for investigating political conventions and using online databases. Schouten gets to conventions two days early, before security shows up, to…

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IRE Preview: Hone your campus coverage skills with our lineup of pros

Screen shot from Walt Bogdanich’s New York Times story on a flawed rape case at Florida State University IRE is expanding its vast panel lineup for our national conference in San Francisco to include sessions specially-designed for student journalists and others who cover college campuses and higher education issues. The track will cover topics such…

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Whites getting more spots at top Chicago public high schools

More white students are walking the halls at Chicago’s top four public high schools. At Walter Payton College Prep on the Near North Side, more than 41 percent of freshmen admitted the past four years have been white, compared to 29 percent in 2009, a Chicago Sun-Times analysis of Chicago Public Schools data has found.…

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Behind the Story: How KDNK investigated gas spills on private property

Photo courtesy of KDNK Oil and gas companies reported about 90 spills last year in heavily-drilled Garfield County, Colorado. Many of the leaks happened on private properties leased to drilling companies, said Ed Williams, a reporter at community radio station KDNK. But when unsafe levels of dangerous chemicals like arsenic and benzene contaminated the land,…

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Two Small Business Administration databases updated at NICAR

The NICAR database library has updated data from two Small Business Administration loan programs: The 7a loans program provides loans to small business owners who can’t obtain financing through traditional channels. The database covers loans from 1950 – Sept. 30, 2013. See below for more details. The disaster loans program is the primary form of…

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Virginia paroling violent, mentally ill patients

But what happened in Apartment 433 was more than just another murder. It was a window into today’s mental health care: a system as dysfunctional as the clients it serves. So gutted it has little power to put away even the most dangerous for any real length of time – and almost nowhere to keep…

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