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 "economic growth" ...
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Frac sand mining booms in Wisconsin
An ongoing series looking at the recent growth in Wisconsin’s sand mining industry to meet the increased demand from oil and gas drillers. The frac sand industry has created jobs and economic development in Western Wisconsin, but many residents worry that the industry is not properly regulated. Concerns remain about the impact of the mining on human and environmental health, transportation, and land use.
Tags: Sand mining; oil; gas; human health; environment; transportation; land use
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Free Lunch
Free Lunch is "an expose of hidden and subtle government policies that take from the many to give to the few. It explains why a quarter century of economic growth has not been matched by rising incomes, except for those at the very top."
Tags: government spending; economy; economics; wealthy; incomes; salaries
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Liquid Assets--Turning water into gold
Due to a unique water ownership structure established nearly two decades ago, suburban Denver communities have been forced to pay the highest water connection fees in the country. According to this investigation, this has created a competition for resources to fuel the booming population growth in the suburbs, creating an "unregulated and often untraceable commodities market in Colorado."
Tags: Big Thompson system; utilities; population growth; economic growth; Denver; commodities
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One Billion Customers: Lessons from the Front Lines of Doing Business in China
McGregor, the former Wall Street Journal bureau chief in China, wrote this book as a series of narrative stories that reveal what doing business in China a truly like. The book addresses issues like corruption and the rift between culture and politics. It also addresses how the past 50 years of Communism affected not only the business world in China, but also culture in general.
Tags: China; Asia; Communism; business; capitalism; American Chamber of Commerce in China; population growth; economics
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Investigation of a Cabinet Member
This investigation uncovered a "culture of corruption and questionable ethics" in the New Jersey Commerce and Economic Growth Commission. Specifically, Commerce Secretary William Watley and his Chief of Staff, Lesly Devereaux abused their positions and cost the taxpayers a lot of money. After these articles were published, Watley resigned and Devereaux was indicted on criminal charges.
Tags: FOIA; OPRA; fraud; St. James AME Church; attorney general; Division of Criminal Justice; lobbyists.
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Fiscal Lesson: Danes Show Europe a Path to Prosperity: Tough Spending Curbs
The Wall Street Journal takes a look at Denmark's monetary policy and impressive economic growth.
Tags: Denmark; monetary policy; Europe; economics
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Cost of Growth
The Greensboro News & Record analyzes how urban growth in Guilford County over the last ten years has affected the quality of life for area residents. The four-part series uses a variety of socio-economic and environmental indicators to show that growth has had both and negative and positive effect on life there.
Tags: Guilford County; quality of life; urban growth; sprawl; indicators; data; socio-economic; environmental
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Debt to Society: The Real Price of Prisons
A Mother Jones interactive project chronicles and quantifies "the explosive growth of America's inmate population." The online series depicts the economic and social costs of prisons, and includes a database on states' prison population and prison spending. The first part explains why America became the world's leading jailer, and looks at the paradoxical growth of the incarceration rate over the past decades when the crime rate was declining. The reporters find that "the soaring number of nonviolent drug offenders" and increases in sentencing are behind the expansion of prisons. The second part discovers that "prisons are rife with infectious illnesses - and threaten to spread them to the public." The third story examines the influence of jail sentences on inmates' inclination to violence after being released. The fourth part looks at the social costs for children who have a parent behind bars. The fifth article explains various alternatives for society to respond to lawbreakers without locking them up. The sixth part reveals that spending on a domestic anti-drug war is ineffective. The seventh article finds that "mass incarceration comes at a moral cost to every American."
Tags: corrections; law enforcement; crime; racial disparity; arrests; the Twin Towers Correctional Facility; rape; HIV; mental health; AIDS; families; drugs; courts; judges; CAR; database mapping project
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A Hot Stock's Dirty Secret
Fortune looks at the failure of Rambus, a technology design company to utilize completely its position as a holder of computer technology patents. The story follows the growth of Rambus from a tiny company, in 1992, to corporation demanding royalties on technology that represents 80% of the $32 billion market for chips, in 1999. The article describes how Rambus has been laid low, after a jury found out it has plotted to gather patents on standardized technology instead of disclosing them. "Rambus' problems have come not from the passing of an economic bubble but from its embrace of two age-old sins: duplicity and greed," Fortune reports.
Tags: technology; programmable latency; mode registers; low-voltage swing; U.S. Patent and Trademark Office; Siemens; DRAM technology; microprocessors; Joint Electron Device Engineering Council
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The Return of the Wall Street Vulture
The Business Week reports on "the Great American Fire Sale" on Wall Street where troubled companies and their assets are sold at bargain prices. The story analyses the various strategies of the so-called vultures - investors who risk "billions to buy up the wreckage of the U.S. economic bust." The main conclusion is that the vultures play an important role in cutting "the deadwood" out and helping the economy resume its rapid growth. The report includes a list of the largest companies that have filed for bankruptcy since January, 2000, and their assets.
Tags: business; bankruptcy; lawyers; investment firms; restructuring; unemployment; profits; executives; CEOs; debt; leveraged buyouts