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 "online databases" ...
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Green Inc., Environmentalism for Profit
With the groundbreaking series Green Inc., USA Today for the first time uncovers the truth behind the soaring movement toward constructing buildings that are certified as environmentally friendly. The series shows how "green" buildings often are barely different from their supposedly conventional counterparts -- except that green-building designers and owners often win huge tax breaks, zoning waivers and other valuable perks from government agencies. The series involves an unprecedented analysis of records for 7,100 green-certified buildings to show how the designers follow the easiest and cheapest steps to get certified. Numerous freedom-of-information requests revealed the enormous tax breaks awards to the building designers and owners, and also show how some buildings are falling far short of their environmental promise.
Tags: Environmental friendly; taxes; green buildings; certificated
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Digital Footprint & Sunshine Law
Our investigation led to a politician's resignation and criminal charges using social network search engines, traditional online databases and open records requests to identify his criminal past and as many as seven females who were pictured in nude photos, harassed, stalked or suffered cyber identity theft.
Tags: broadcast; criminal past; politician; resignation
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Watchdog website and its web pages
The Oklahoman/NewsOK.com started this project in 2008 with the Right to Know page, a collection of databases developed internally to go along with stories and links to relevant public information. That site became part of the Watchdog page in 2009. In 2010, the staff continued to evolve the Watchdog page with "mini-sites" of investigative topics, such as a political corruption case at the Oklahoma Legislature; the staff's FOI fight over the birth dates of public employees; and allegations of bid-rigging with a married lawmaker and lobbyist for a private company seeking a state juvenile justice contract. Other "mini-sites" under Watchdog include ongoing coverage of the state Department of Human Services and the federal stimulus package.
Tags: continuous coverage; online; watchdog; bid-rigging; Department of Human Services; federal stimulus; FOI; Right to Know
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Neighborhoods for Sale
This eight-part yearlong series documented and exposed the nexus between the deep-pocketed developers who have transformed the city during the building boom of the past decade, the alderman who supported these wholesale changes and millions of dollars in campaign donations. The Tribune's series began by exploring how "pay to play" politics drives zoning changes in Chicago and showing how seemingly arcane official actions directly affect people across the city's neighborhoods. The Tribune also created a first-ever interactive database containing ten years of zoning changes, allowing residents to go online and research developments in their own neighborhoods.
Tags: real estate; pay-to-play; Richard Daley; interactive database; developers; corruption
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The Dark Side of the Internet
Sparked by a report that U.S. companies were "supplying cops (in China) with databases, software and hardware needed to track criminals and dissidents", Business Week looks into the many "dark corners of Internet commerce." Click fraud, spyware, online advertising, identity thieves using "virtual currency" are all covered in this series of stories.
Tags: Yahoo.com; Direct Revenue; identity theft; online advertising; click fraud; spyware
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Paradise: At What Cost?
For a year-long convergence investigation into Southwest Florida housing prices, reporters for Naples Daily News custom-built a searchable online database of more than 100,000 real estate transactions and median home prices for more than 1600 single family neighborhoods and condo developments in Southwest Fla. They also did more than 500 interviews with local residents, housing and government officials. The series resulted in 33 stories, multiple video interviews, behind-the-scenes vodcasts, weekly podcasts, online reader chats
Tags: Broadcast; cable access television; CAR; computer-assisted reporting; convergence; Housing; development; economy; real estate; podcasts; vodcasts; online databases; reader response; interactive
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Personal Politics
Thirty nine states have lawmakers who meet part time. These lawmakers often pursue other careers, sometimes in sectors that are regulated by the government. The Center for Public Integrity recognized the huge potential for conflicts of interest, if lawmakers end up serving on committees or deciding legislation that could affect their outside interests. The only way to combat the conflict of interest is through full disclosure of lawmakers' private interests, however, many states do not make that information available to the public. But, this project by the Center for Public Integrity does that for them: in two years, reporters used thousands of documents and dozens of interviews to create a database, available online, that includes information on lawmakers; outside interests, as well as the committees they serve on in the legislature.
Tags: transparency; legislative ethics; private companies; lawyers; political fraud; conflict of interest; legislation; state capital; state government
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Made in the USA
Crogan's series returns to the issue of American companies that supplied Saddam Hussein's regime with nuclear, chemical and biological weapons and missile technology. His stories look at both industrial and government bodies that had financial ties to Hussein, even going so far as to create an on-line searchable database for these companies and government entities.
Tags: Iraq; Hussein; Gulf War; weapons of mass destruction; WMD; business; international
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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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Inside the Stolen Credit Card Market
"MSNBC reveals in some 20 stories the rampant theft of credit cards from online Web sites, and goes undercover to explain the complicated laundering schemes set up by criminals to profit from database thefts."
Tags: CD; crime; fraud; credit cards; theft; Internet; Online shopping