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Back to school with data and documents
By Kyle DeasGraduate student, University of Missouri It’s that time of year again: the school supply aisles at your local stores are crammed with people; the summer heat is giving its last dying gasps; and education beat reporters across the country are being asked, for the second or fifth or fifteenth time, to write a…
Read MoreUtah Transit Authority failed to act on safety concerns, now one teen is dead
A concerned citizen, and Union Pacific employee called the UTA last November to voice her concerns about a sound wall that was too high for people to see oncoming trains. However, even after the second complaint, by another concerned citizen, the UTA did nothing. Now, 15-year-old Shariah Casper is dead. “Records obtained through open records…
Read MorePost-9/11 laws blurring the line of terrorism
“The Sept. 11 attacks prompted almost every nation to adopt or toughen anti-terror laws. Until now, no one followed up to see who was impacted. In an unprecedented 9-month investigation, journalists in more than 100 countries found that at least 35,000 people have been convicted on terror charges since 2001, from bombers to bloggers.AP National…
Read MoreLouisiana government contractor may be overbilling for thousands of dollars more
Fox 8‘s, Lee Zurik investigates one Louisiana government contractor that appears to be over-charging FEMA and local Sheriff’s department. Benetech, and it’s owner Aaron Bennett, have made millions of public dollars since Katrina by overcharging for their employees. One former employee of Benetech, Joddie Crenshaw, agreed to be interviewed by Zurik, and stated that for…
Read MoreWinners of CAR Conference drawing announced
Thank you to the dozens of members who submitted more than 40 panel ideas for the 2012 CAR Conference in St. Louis. IRE’s staff, and the local organizing committee for the conference, is reviewing submissions and beginning to piece together the schedule for the four-day conference Feb. 23-26, 2012. Continue to check IRE.org for updates about the conference…
Read MoreJournalism students report on the Haitian population in the Dominican Republic
Seventeen students from the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Arizona State University traveled “to the Dominican Republic to investigate how immigration and border policies are affecting the country’s large Haitian population.” The Florida Center for Investigative Reporting recently published several reports on what the students found: “Whitney Phillips examined how the Dominican…
Read MoreKBR’s umbrella contract with the government raises questions
As U.S. troops moved into Afghanistan in the months following 9/11, there were few facilities in place that would offer them support. As Sharon Weinberger of The Center for Public Integrity reports, “the military needed someone to do everything from housing troops to rebuilding airfields. The solution was a contract called the Logistics Civil Augmentation Program, or LOGCAP,…
Read MoreAfter spending millions on a publicly funded power plant, company has little to show
In a two-part series, the Duluth News Tribune found that despite receiving $42 million in state and federal funding over 10 years, a proposed “clean coal” plant has yet to move a shovelful of dirt. And despite receiving all of its backing from the public trough, the company’s spending records, including its officers’ paychecks, were…
Read MoreFlorida housing market still struggles with foreclosures
As the real estate market began to crumble around 2007, the Florida housing market took a big hit. In 2009, nearly 6 percent of the state’s “entire housing stock” was in foreclosure. While the market has improved slightly in the past two years, there are still “almost 40,000 properties in foreclosure. “Almost 30,000 more are in…
Read MoreDeath penalty in Military polluted with racial disparities
Melissa Taylor, McClatchy, reports on the findings of a disturbing academic research study. “A group of law and statistics professors found that minorities in the military were twice as likely to be sentenced to death as their white counterparts, a statistic higher than is known to exist in most civilian court systems.” However, the authors of…
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