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We're back with another episode of the IRE Radio Podcast. This week we're focusing on FOIA. Here's the lineup:
You can find and download previous podcast episodes on our Soundcloud page.
Looking for links to the stories, resources and events we discussed on this week's podcast? We've collected them for you.
Ever wonder what kinds of questions federal agencies ask FOIA liaisons? We did. So we went right to the source. Kirsten Mitchell is a facilitator in The Office of Government Information Services (OGIS), a neutral office within the National Archives that anyone — requester or federal agency — can come to for help with the FOIA process.
Mitchell, a former journalist, will be available during the IRE Conference this month to answer questions about the FOIA process and help reporters with their requests. You can learn more and sign up here.
IRE student George Varney talked with Mitchell this week to learn more about her job and the tips she offers journalists and officials.
You can listen to the full interview in our Soundcloud player embedded in this post. A portion of this interview will also be featured on an episode of the IRE Radio Podcast, which comes out tomorrow.
Welcome to the inaugural episode of the IRE Radio Podcast. On these regular audio features you'll find a brief recap of IRE news and upcoming events, interviews with journalists and IRE staff, and audio tips from the best in the biz. We'll try to keep each episode around 15 minutes.
For now the podcast is hosted on our Soundcloud page and, unlike our IRE Radio clips, it's available for download.
Here's what we have in this week's episode:
Give it a listen and let us know what you think. We'd love to hear from you.
– Sarah Hutchins, IRE web editor, sarah@ire.org
– George Varney, IRE web student, georgev@ire.org
Looking for links to the stories, resources and events we discussed on this week's podcast? We've collected them for you.
One year ago an EF5 tornado tore through Moore, Oklahoma and left 25 people dead. A month after the storm, Oklahoman reporter Paul Monies and CBS News Southern Bureau Chief Scott Keenan talked about their experiences covering the twister during a session at the 2013 IRE Conference.
Keenan encouraged journalists to question the injury and fatality numbers officials present. They're often wrong, he said. Keenan also offered tips for navigating the muddied, post-disaster chain of command and filing stories from the field.
To get real-time weather information, the Oklahoman sends a weather reporter to a local National Weather Service office on severe weather days. Monies, an energy reporter at the Oklahoma City-based paper, also discussed steps managers took to provide support for staff in the wake of the storm.
You can listen to all of their tips using our Soundcloud playlist.
IRE members can listen to the entire session, "Investigating after disaster," by logging in and clicking the link.
Here are a few investigations that came out of Moore tornado. Did we miss something? Send us a link at web@ire.org.
At least 24 students and teachers were injured when cinder-block walls fell at Briarwood Elementary School. Seven students were killed at Plaza Towers School during the EF5 tornado. An analysis of the debris and interviews with experts turned up serious structural problems. Documents also revealed that an engineering firm with a history of design flaws had worked on one of the schools.
How prepared is your child's school for emergencies?
KWTV - Oklahoma City
Despite a 10-year-old state law requiring schools to have up-to-date safety and disaster plans on file with local emergency management officials, 9 Investigates at KWTV in Oklahoma City and 6 Investigates at KOTV in Tulsa, Okla., found that few districts are in compliance. Often, fewer than half the schools in an area had current plans on file, and very few private schools did.
Florida's mandated tutoring program used taxpayer dollars to hire firms run by criminals, cheaters and profiteers. Last year Tampa Bay Times reporter Michael LaForgia used invoice records, complaint reports, audits and interviews to report on the industry, which goes virtually unchecked by state regulators.
In this series of clips LaForgia walks through how to investigate subsidized tutoring. To get started, LaForgia introduces Supplemental Educational Services (SES) and explains how it affects your community.
Step 1: Identify the contractors and find out who's getting paid.
(To view the presentation that goes with this audio, click here.)
Step 2: Run background checks. Always. Don't assume the school division has done this. LaForgia found companies headed by rapists, thieves and drug users.
Step 3: Follow the money. Get lists of payments to tutoring vendors and build a spreadsheet.
Step 4: Check with the regulators. Look for banned vendors, complaints, and lists of contract terminations.
- Read Michael LaForgia's series on Florida's tutoring program, "No cash left behind: Tutoring for profit in Florida."
- View LaForgia's slides on investigating subsidized tutoring
- IRE members can log in and listen to the entire session, featuring Will Evans (The Center for Investigative Reporting), Kevin Crowe (Milwaukee Journal Sentinel), and Mc Nelly Torres (WTVJ-NBC6 in Miami).
Will Evans of The Center for Investigative Reporting explains how he started investigating an Oakland, Calif. church school that appears to have vastly inflated its enrollment numbers to collect extra taxpayer funding.
"The place was in total disrepair, but the pastor drove an Escalade," Evans said.
In this first clip, Evans explains how he found the story (at a subway station, of all places) and began checking out the school.
The next step was to follow the money. Evans explains how Title I and Title II funds flowed into the private school with little oversight.
The religious school appeared to be inflating its enrollment figures to get more money, a detail Evans was able to nail down using local fire department inspection records. In this clip he explains how to spot red flags and, better yet, confirm your hunches.
By George Varney
Fredreka Schouten presented a campaign finance panel at the 2014 CAR Conference in Baltimore with fellow USA TODAY reporter Chris Schnaars and AP reporter Jack Gillum. The panel focused on different techniques for investigating political conventions and using online databases.
Schouten gets to conventions two days early, before security shows up, to scope out who is sitting where and what organizations have skyboxes.
Schouten also explained what the creation, or dissolution, of a super PAC can mean.
Politicians can get in major legal trouble for incorrect FEC filings. So while the data is vast, the stakes are high to keep it honest and comprehensive.
Want more?
Oil and gas companies reported about 90 spills last year in heavily-drilled Garfield County, Colorado. Many of the leaks happened on private properties leased to drilling companies, said Ed Williams, a reporter at community radio station KDNK.
But when unsafe levels of dangerous chemicals like arsenic and benzene contaminated the land, landowners were sometimes left in the dark, Williams found.
While companies are legally required to notify landowners about spills, state spill reports don’t require them to document the property owner’s name. That’s made it difficult for regulators to enforce the law.
To nail down the story, Williams used online databases from the state – which he cleaned and analyzed in Excel – and a good amount of trial and error.
Listen to Williams' story here. He also recorded a short "Behind the Story" piece for IRE:
By Hannah Schmidt
Joce Sterman of WMAR-Baltimore and Michael Pell of Reuters explain where reporters can find inspection data and how they can incorporate it into investigative pieces.
Sterman said one of the first hurdles for a journalist to overcome is the expense of gathering data. She suggested reporters haggle to bring down copy costs. And maybe invest in a scanner.
By Hannah Schmidt
Jill Riepenhoff, a projects reporter at The Columbus Dispatch, and Tisha Thompson, an investigative reporter for WRC-Washington D.C., use consumer and professional complaints to fuel their investigations. In these audio clips the two reporters offer advice on where to look for complaints and how to use them.
In Columbus, Ohio, landlords allowing homes to become rundown is a major problem. Riepenhoff used complaints from homeowners and court documents to create The Columbus Dispatch’s “Legacy of Neglect” series.
She found the subject of her story, chronic offender Joseph S. Alaura, from court documents. He had gone to court multiple times after allowing his tenants to live in extremely run-down homes.
Tisha Thompson uses consumer complaints from the Attorney General's office to fuel her investigations. She used these records to create "Under the Hood: The AAMCO Investigation."
Thompson suggested reporters read every page of the complaint for information.
Professional boards offer another set of complaints reporters can use. Thompson said these are a gold mine of information. Professional board disciplinary actions show problems that reporters can turn into stories.
There's more...
Want to use complaints in your next story? Check out tipsheets from Riepenhoff and Thompson.
Are you an Uplink subscriber? Learn more about Ripenhoff’s “Legacy of Neglect” series on IRE Uplink.
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