A big "Thank You" to all who participated in another successful membership drive!
The results of the drawing are:
A strong group of stories were submitted to IRE for the IRE Freelance Fellowship competition. The winners of the Freelance Fellowships for 2013 are: Wally Roberts, for his story on abuse in the nation’s largest nursing homes; Leah Bartos, for her work regarding shoddy forensic work; Erin Segal, for her work on misunderstood aspects of our immigration policy, specifically on the deportation of military veterans; and Joyce Tsai, for her stories on the number of awards given to servicemen and women during the War on Terror.
Due to the generosity of an anonymous donor, this fellowship program has allowed ...
Read more ...On Monday, three young Cleveland women who had been missing for nearly a decade were found alive and, according to authorities, appeared unharmed. Amanda Berry, Gina DeJesus, Michelle Knight were kidnapped and held for years as prisoners inside a house in Cleveland. Police arrested the house owner, Ariel Castro, 52, and his two brothers, Pedro Castro, 54 and Onil Castro, 50.
Journalists are already starting to uncover details about the case and the brothers. In the search for further context, property records, background searches, court records and smart sourcing will be crucial. IRE is pulling resources, including tipsheets and archived ...
Read more ...Two men were killed by gunmen in Chihuahua, Mexico, Saturday morning who are both sons of different well-known Mexican journalists, Reuters reported. A spokesman told Reuters that the deaths of the two men were unrelated to their parents' professions. The incident prefaced another later that weekend in which authorities found seven people dead in a car in a suburb near Mexico City Sunday morning, according to the Reuters article.
"Mexican journalists are often targeted and killed by drug cartels for reporting on their activities." Reuters reported. A recent story in the Texas Observer reported on the unsolved murder of El ...
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In October, the National Institute for Computer-Assisted Reporting sent an email over its listserv announcing that updated data were available from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. Ron Shawgo of the Journal Gazette of Indiana then realized the paper had never examined OSHA data for Indiana. So he requested the data. Through his analysis, he discovered that Indiana’s inspection numbers have been declining, resulting in a backlog of businesses that have never been inspected.
Shawgo began with 21 tables of data for Indiana, dating back to 1972. He linked the tables and ran queries in Microsoft Access. “I started ...
Read more ...Investigative Reporters & Editors, Inc. is launching a new award -- dubbed the Golden Padlock -- recognizing the most secretive publicly-funded agency or person in the United States. It is calling on journalists and the public for worthy nominees.
"This honor acknowledges the dedication of government officials working tirelessly to keep vital information hidden from the public," said David Cay Johnston, president of IRE . "Their abiding commitment to secrecy and impressive skill in information suppression routinely keeps knowledge about everything from public health risks to government waste beyond the reach of citizens who pay their salaries."
IRE is now accepting nominations for the ...
Read more ...At its June 20 meeting during our annual conference in San Antonio, the IRE Board of Directors will consider modifying the policy that bans entries in the IRE Awards if a Board member has been involved with a story at any level.
IRE currently has one of the strictest such policies of any journalism contest. Under the policy, any involvement by a board member makes a story ineligible. In addition to writing, reporting, editing and producing, this has been interpreted to include senior editors who helped provide direction or did a final read on a project.
The policy was designed ...
Read more ...Lawyers have continuing legal education. Doctors have continuing medical education. What do journalists have? IRE!
While the underlying ethic of investigative journalism does not change, technology and the media are changing faster than ever. So stick with us. We will help each other.
IRE is holding a membership drive throughout April, and everyone who either signs up or renews is eligible for prizes, including free hotel and registration for either the IRE or CAR conference.
We are asking you to take these simple steps:
1. Renew your membership (regardless of when it expires). Maybe consider re-upping for three years. It ...
Read more ...The Sunlight Foundation released a new "journalistic accountability" tool today, wryly named "Churnalism". It tells you if an author was "churning" out somebody else's material by checking journalistic text against a database of press releases. To the dismay of plagiarists and lazy reporters alike, it even checks against Wikipedia.
The site provides a few examples. Enter this story from CBS News, for instance, about a mother who found the chemical BPA was linked to her son’s thyroid problems, and churnalism will provide you this press release that that the CBS article sources, and highlights the portions of text ...
Read more ...Investigative Reporters & Editors salutes Linsdey Hobbs of Otterbein University in Ohio, recipient of the eighth annual Betty Gage Holland Award recognizing excellence in college journalism. Hobbs and the student newspaper at Otterbein, The Tan & Cardinal, were honored for their continued coverage of increased secrecy surrounding campus crime in 2012.
After Otterbein's campus security force gained certification as a full police department in late 2011, Hobbs investigated. She found a longstanding pattern of student misdemeanors -- and sometimes more serious crimes -- being handled through campus judicial proceedings rather than criminal courts. Subsequent reporting by Hobbs also details the inconsistency with which ...
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