Posts Tagged ‘Investigations’
Behind the Story: An information gap in child abuse cases
There were signs of problems before 15-year-old Jeanette Maples died of starvation and abuse in Oregon in December 2009. Although child services had been involved in the case, residents were shocked to find that Maples death had not been prevented. Oregonian reporter Michelle Cole wanted to know what, if anything, could have been done to…
Read MoreBehind The Story: Investigating credit report errors
Courtesy of The Columbus Dispatch When Jill Riepenhoff and Mike Wagner began researching credit report errors in 2010, virtually everyone they spoke with knew someone who had been affected. Although the industry lacks an official outlet for consumers to dispute credit claims, the reporters’ nationwide FOIA requests returned nearly 28,000 files from the Federal Trade…
Read MoreBehind the Story: The San Diego port, altered public records and interactive presentation
San Diego’s Tenth Avenue Marine Terminal is home to a rare deep water port that’s valuable to the maritime industry, but for the last ten years, developers have argued that the area should be transformed into an entertainment district. When two businessmen responsible for running the U-T San Diego began promoting the stadium, Brooke Williams…
Read MoreBehind the Story: Investigating a building collapse, creating an interactive timeline
A normal day on the local government beat became two months of investigating for Lansing State Journal reporter Lindsay VanHulle. After a portion of the residential St. Anne Lofts building collapsed in East Lansing, Mich., VanHulle discovered problems in the city’s building code and development programs. Prior to the building’s collapse, these problems allowed unpermitted…
Read MoreBehind the Story: Using tips from sources, data and documents to uncover inflated hospital prices
On Thursday, The Charlotte Observer and the News & Observer in Raleigh won bronze in the Barlett & Steele Awards for Investigative Business Journalism, funded by the Donald W. Reynolds National Center for Business Journalism, for their series “Prognosis: Profits,” in which the reporters dissected the finances of large healthcare institutions and discovered inflated prices, lawsuits against thousands…
Read MoreIRE members among Barlett & Steele Awards winners
The New York Times, USA Today and a joint project by The Charlotte Observer and The Raleigh News & Observer were winners in the sixth annual Barlett & Steele Awards for Investigative Business Journalism. The awards are funded by the Donald W. Reynolds National Center for Business Journalism and named for the investigative team of Don Barlett and Jim…
Read MoreBloomberg reporters find FOIA failures in Obama administration
Transparency Watch is an occasional series from IRE tracking the fight for open records. If you have a story about a quest for public records you’d like to share, email us at web@ire.org. By Danielle Ivory, Bloomberg President Barack Obama on his first full day in office ordered federal officials to “usher in a new era of open…
Read MoreBehind the Story: How the marketing of Oxycontin trumped science
For more than a year, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel has been investigating prescription drugs and the dangerous side effects of using opioids ot treat chronic pain. The latest installment of the series tracks the lives of chronic pain sufferers who praised the drug in a 1998 promotional video. Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reporters John Fauber and…
Read MoreTraining from Orlando you can take home
More than 850 journalists, educators and other professionals learned new skills, shared ideas and discussed best practices for journalism at the 2011 IRE Conference. Whether you made it to the conference or not, there are tips and tools that can be used in daily reporting and long-term projects.Now that the conference is in the past,…
Read MoreSeveral IRE Members win Pulitzers for investigative work
Congratulations to several IRE members who won Pulitzer Prizes today. Daniel Gilbert, who won the Public Service Pulitzer, also won an IRE Award this year. The Pulitzer committee wrote that Gilbert’s work illuminated “the murky mismanagement of natural-gas royalties owed to thousands of land owners in southwest Virginia, spurring remedial action by state lawmakers.” Gilbert,…
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