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“Desert Connections”
Chuck Neubauer and Richard T. Cooper of the Los Angeles Times report on an epic development project in Nevada – a “67-square-mile tract of empty desert will blossom into one of the biggest cities in the fastest-growing state in the country and the projected home to more than 200,000 people.” The project is on track…
Read MoreSept. 11 – Five years later
The Washington Post has launched a series examining how government agencies have responded to 9/11 in the past five years. Stories include coverage of a failed $170 million contract to rebuild the FBI’s internal case file system, and how training at the FBI Academy fails to adequately keep pace with its new focus on terrorism.
Read MoreA tale of elderly exploitation
In a unique investigation built as a narrative, Lee Hancock of the Dallas Morning News reports on a troubling trend of finacial exploitation of the elderly. This series details the experiences of Mary Ellen Bendtsen. “Her crumbling mansion is now a battleground for her relatives and two art-deco antique dealers with a history of befriending…
Read MorePolice abuse power to extort sex
Nancy Phillips and Craig R. McCoy of The Philadelphia Inquirer report on the troubling trend of police officers in Philadelphia using their status to extort sex. “Most police departments do little to identify the offenders, and even less to stop them. Unlike other types of police misconduct, the abuse of police power to coerce sex…
Read MoreRacial Diversity in adoptions on the rise
Lynette Clemetson and Ron Nixon of The New York Times looked at federal records and data maintained by Cornell University to identify a rise in interracial adoptions. “In 2004, 26 percent of black children adopted from foster care, about 4,200, were adopted transracially, nearly all by whites. That is up from roughly 14 percent, or…
Read More“Adult interference” inflates NJ test scores
The Philadelphia Inquirer‘s Frank Kummer and Melanie Burney expose the findings of a New Jersey Department of Education report on irregular test scores in the region. While avoiding the use of the word cheating, the report found that “adult interference” was the likely culprit of unusually high test scores in the Camden area. The Department…
Read MoreACS Data Spawns Slew of Stories
Following the release of the American Community Survey data by the Census Bureau, Mary Jo Sylwester of the St. Paul Pioneer Press compiled a list of stories utilizing the data set. Some of these include: Impact of immigrants on churches, St. Paul Pioneer Press A third of the households in Wisconsin are individuals living alone,…
Read MoreHospital profits from nonprofit tax loopholes
Tim Darragh and Ann Wlazelek, of The Morning Call, report on the Lehigh Valley (PA) Hospital which posted a record surplus – $ 76 million – in 2005. “Such boomtown prosperity at a nonprofit institution is allowed under the tax code as long as the hospital provides a substantial “community benefit” each year in exchange…
Read MoreBlack students leaving Birmingham (Ala.) schools
Jeff Hansen and Marie Leech of The Birmingham News report on black flight from Birmingham’s public schools and its impact on suburban school districts. In the past five years, Birmingham schools have lost 20 percent of their students. Nine of every 10 of those 7,300 children who left the city were black.
Read MoreWar Crimes in Vietnam went unpunished
A report by Nick Turse and Deborah Nelson for the Los Angeles Times shows recently declassified documents regarding war crimes committed during the Vietnam War establish that hundreds of soldiers went unpunished for crimes against Vietnamese civilians. “The records describe recurrent attacks on ordinary Vietnamese
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