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 "clustering" ...
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What's killing their children?
A 19 ACTION NEWS Investigation lasting an entire year expose a cancer cluster killing children in Clyde, Ohio. The federal EPA has now started their own investigation after 19 ACTION NEWS and viewers demanded that the U.S. government step in to help solve this deadly mystery. The federal investigation comes after five years of the state of Ohio failing to find a cause of what has killed six children with more than 30 kids diagnosed with cancer.
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Murder Mysteries
Scripps Howard developed a computer algorithim that can identify suspicious clusters of homicides of women that have a significant chance of containing serial murders.
Tags: serial killer; murder; victim; demographic; offenders
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Murder Mysteries
Schripps Howard News Service has conducted the most complete accounting ever made of homicide victims in the United States. Aggressive use of state and local Freedom of Information laws allowed the wire service to assemble a database of 525,742 homicides, including records of 15,322 killings never reported to the FBI. The "Murder Mysteries" project calculated the homicide clearance rate for every police department in the U.S., prompting four departments to promise reforms. Scripps also developed an algorithm that identified 161 suspicious clusters of unsolved homicides involving women of similar age killed through similar means. Authorities in Gary, Ind., and Youngstown, Ohio, Launched new investigations into possible serial murder in their communities as a result of this project.
Tags: Murder; mystery; FBI; homicide; killings; serial killer; police department; investigation; FOI; algorithm; computer-assisted reporting;
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section 8: Subsidizing Surburbia
"Thousands of poor people have moved out of Cincinnati's inner-city ghettos and settled into homes on middle-class, suburban streets- exactly the result a federal housing program intended. But that victory comes at a cost: Poor families with government subsidies that help pay the rent are creating new pockets of low-income housing in formerly stable, middle-class neighborhoods."
Tags: clustering; relocation; township; housing; property; real estate; urban development;
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Coincidence or Cluster
"The series examined a series of lawsuits filed since April 2006 that claim that groundwater and air contamination from two neighboring manufacturers caused people in McCullom lake, population 1,000, to get sick with brain cancer and other illnesses."
Tags: cancer; McHenry County Department of Health; law suit; groundwater; contamination; Rohm and Haas Manufacturing Company; Modine Manufacturing company
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Toxic air raises unhealthy odds
This examination centers on an Indianapolis neighborhood that has had more people die of lung cancer than anywhere else in Marion County. The investigation found that residents of the neighborhood, in an industrial part of town, were hospitalized for respiratory problems at rates more than three times the county average. Nevertheless, state and local health officials have done almost nothing to investigate documented risks from air pollution or the health problems they may cause.
Tags: cancer cluster; air pollution; cancer death rates; EPA; Environmental Protection Agency; National Toxic Assessments data; public health
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Access to Alcohol
A Rocky Mountain News analysis found that the college towns of Boulder and Fort Collins have among the highest concentrations of liquor licenses in Colorado, with many or most clustered around the state's two flagship universities. The result is easy access to alcohol for University of Colorado and Colorado State University students. Both universities are dealing with tragedy in the wake of student deaths, both alcohol-related.
Tags: liquor licenses; University of Colorado; Colorado State University; Boulder; Fort Collins; liquor stores; fake ID
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Analysis finds clusters of nursing home violators
Gannett News Service's four month investigation found that nearly three-fourths of the most severe and repeated nursing home patient care violations found in the past four years were concentrated in a dozen states. GNS interviewed dozens of people and analyzed four years' worth of data on 1,6000 nursing homes.
Tags: nursing; nursing homes
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Special Report: Wyle Laboratories; "As few regulators watched, pollution, concerns seeped in"
The article investigates how a Department of Defense contractor, Wyle Laboratories, spent the past 50 years conducting "hazardous military tests and mishandling its toxic waste." The site is also located in the small community of Norco, where the residents suffer from thyroid disease cluster believed to be caused by the lab's contamination. The article discovers that many of the health and environmental regulators who agreed that Wyle Laboratories was safe enough to be in the community had "never set foot on the property."
Tags: Wyle Laboratories; hazardous mililtary tests; pollution; Norco; thyroid disease cluster; contamination
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Numbers add up to trouble
When Akron Public Schools instituted an open enrollment policy, it inadvertently allowed the gaps between different school clusters in the city to widen. The investigation analyzed several categories of data to understand these gaps, and identified certain factors that may have contributed to the differences in different clusters' success. Another interesting aspect of the story is that race, per-pupil spending, and attendance rates were either not a factor or too small to be meaningful.
Tags: education; school; race; open enrollment; public schools