The IRE Resource Center is a major research library containing more than 23,250 investigative stories — both print and broadcast. These stories are searchable online or by contacting the Resource Center directly (573-882-3364 or rescntr@ire.org) where a researcher can help you pinpoint what you need. Browse or search the tipsheet section of our library below. Stories are not available for download but can be easily ordered by contacting the Resource Center:
Search results for "OH" ...
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Bad to the Bone
When four executives of a medical-device company called Synthes went to jail for illegally marketing a bone cement—five patients had died after it was injected into their spines—Mina Kimes knew there had to be a compelling saga behind a case that had generated little coverage beyond local news articles. So she began digging, first with FOIA requests for never-before-published government documents, and then assembling hundreds of pages of court transcripts and internal company e-mails and reports. She used that foundation to begin the harder challenge: persuading Synthes employees, many of them terrified by the criminal case and the company’s intimidating chairman, to talk to her. With six months of grueling, old-fashioned reporting, Kimes succeeded, and “Bad to the Bone” is the masterful result. Not only did she persuade more than 20 current and former company employees to speak, but she also revealed a story whose disturbing breadth far exceeded the case presented in court. Her tour de force reporting raises profound new questions about the culpability of a key figure who wasn’t charged: Hansjörg Wyss, the reclusive and controlling Swiss founder and chairman—one of the richest people in the world—who made crucial decisions about how to sell the bone cement. This is a classic tale of corporate malfeasance: Warned by the government not to sell its bone cement for use in the spine, Synthes ignored the admonition despite clear evidence of lethal danger—a pig had died within seconds when the cement was tested on it—and encouraged surgeons to use the cement on people, five of whom died soon afterward. But “Bad to the Bone” isn’t just an exposé. It opens a window into a broader issue: how the medical system actually runs. Readers see how salespeople with no medical training advise surgeons—inside the OR during operations—on how to use their devices. They experience the tale of one surgeon who continues using the cement even after two of his patients died. Oh, and what sort of justice does Synthes itself receive? Wyss sells it, for $20 billion, to health care giant Johnson & Johnson, which praises Synthes’s “culture” and “values.” Corporate crime. Death on the operating room table. Secret e-mails. Surgeons on the edge. An imperious multibillionaire CEO. It’s a mesmerizing article, and Kimes’s reporting takes readers on a deeply unsettling journey that ensures they’ll never look at the medical system the same way again.
Tags: Medical devices; bone cement; Synthes
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Oh Say Can You See?
Tisha Thompson gathered a team of experts, historians, sailors and volunteers to help her re-enact Francis Scott Key's journey during the Battle of Fort McHenry, to see if it was actually possible that he saw the American flag when he wrote the Star Spangled Banner. The investigation found that it was not likely for him to have spotted the flag.
Tags: patriotism; national anthem; fourth of July; history; re-enactment
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Blue Mob
This investigative story is a narrative as told by an eccentric civil rights lawyer. It started off as a regular coverage of a rally protesting police brutality. As it turned out the reporter learned about the incidents of police brutality in a small town of Warren, OH. On pursuing this lead the reporter found that people who were arrested in this town were not only beaten up but that their families were afraid to talk and feared more police harassment.
Tags: police brutality; anti police brutality rally; Warren Ohio; Ohio crime; Ohio police; FOIA; public records; police; law; civil rights; civil rights lawyer; Cleveland; Richard Olivito
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Sex Abuse Continues; Juvenile offenders often locked in rooms together
Staff reporter, Geoff Dutton of the Columbus Dispatch talks about the rate of sexual offenses amongst juveniles in Ohio's only prison for young rapists and sexual molesters. As this reporter discovered, there is widespread sexual activity among the inmates in this prison and also among inmates and the security personnel. The follow-up stories also covers how the facility lacks good counselors and social workers.
Tags: CAR; FOIA; Ohio's only prison for juvenile sexual offenders; juveniles crimes; juvenile prisons; inmates in juvenile prisons; Department of Youth Services; Circleville juvenile prison; Circleville; OH; Circleville
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Oh, What a ball
In Milwaukee, charity events -- the old school way of raising money -- are resurging. Gala events build awareness, allow for the mingling of powerful and socially ambitious -- and importantly, raise money. Others say they aren't effective and have snob appeal. A "good" charity event ibrings in 50 cents on the dollar, according to charity ball veterans. Many are finding that business are getting more involved. Companies are paying for fund-raising events, donating services or canvassing employees for auction items.
Tags: professional volenteer; younger board members; corporate table-buying; ballet; Bal du Lac; Art Museum; Zoo Ball; auctions; in-kind gifts; "unevents; " burn-out; philanthropy; NSFRE; National Society of Fund Raising Executives; charity; nonprofit; philanthropy; tax-exempt
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Oh, Give Me Your Home
Pitch Weekly investigates the hidden scams landlords place on tenants when they offer contract for deeds on rental properties. The philosophy of the landlord- "buy low, rent as high as possible, don't spend a dime on repairs, then bail out before the place falls down." In 1995, the government signed into law a rental-licensing program. "It requires landlords to register properties, pay a modest fee and most important- submit rentals to annual inspections. . . But the landlords figured out a way around it. They started 'selling' their properties on contract for deed-sort of a homemade mortgage program in which the owner, not a commercial lender, accepts payment for the property over a drawn-out period." Pitch Weekly reports how often buyers get the raw-end of the deal.
Tags: housing; rentals; landlords; contract for deed; leasing; Unified Government; home-buyers; Kansas Consumer Protection Act; city inspections; real-estate
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Oh wilderness
It seemed such a grand gesture, the creation of America's newest and second-largest national monument. Yet when Grand Staircase-Escalante was pen-stroked into being, it became not just a magnificent place of solitude and splendor, but also one or bile and revenge.
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Violence Against Women; Danger lurks in small-town America
Newhouse reporters Joe Hallinan and Elizabeth Marchak compiled a special report on violence against women in small to medium sized towns. Their computerized study shows that women are most likely to be raped or killed in areas like Rapid City, SD, Jackson, MI, and Pine Bluff, AK, than in New York, Los Angeles or Washington, DC. This well researched package is accompanied by informative graphics conveying the 10 most dangerous metropolitan areas for women, murder victims by race, safest places for women and rates of female homicide and rape. Marchak's close-up for the Cleveland Plain Dealer on violence against women in Columbus, OH, also accompanies this package.
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No title (id: 10949)
The Plain Dealer reveals that secret leveraging and other undisclosed speculative practices had all but guaranteed collapse of Cuyahoga County's $1.8 billion investment pool. None of this was known to the public, county commissioners or the 70-plus agencies with money in the fund-ironically known as SAFE (Secured Assets Fund Earnings). Taxpayers lost $115 million through speculative trading by county employees who concealed their practices from investors and auditors, May - December 1994.
Tags: OH Rutchick Heider CAR CAJ Derivatives Investment Public Records 88 pages
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Prisoners on Payroll
Using several computer databases, the Dayton Daily News found that in just one month the military paid more than $1 million to 665 prisoners. While criminals convicted by the military get paychecks, the people they beat, raped and molested don't get a dime. As a result, a California Senator introduced a bill to overturn DOD policy that keeps these criminals on government payrolls, Dec. 18 - 19, 1994.
Tags: OH; Carollo; Reed; CHA; Department of Defense