- New England Center for Investigative Reporting - Reporters Sarah Favot, Kirsten Berg and Jenna Ebersole find profound inequities in the application of Massachusetts law passed to crack down on juvenile “super predators.’’

“One 16-year-old went looking for pot at a Brookline High School graduation party, then shot the guest of honor in the chest when he got a racial slur instead. The other 16-year-old stabbed a man 23 times inside his Springfield apartment, returning the next day to steal things from the victim’s home while his body lay nearby.

Both crimes were horrific, but the punishments were strikingly different. The murderer in Springfield, Edgardo Rodriguez, accepted a plea deal for the 2004 killing of Joel Rivera Delgado, allowing him to potentially walk free within the next decade.

The other teen, Antonio Fernandez, took his 2002 case to trial and received the harshest juvenile sentence Massachusetts permits — the harshest in the country, in fact — for shooting Perry Hughes: life in prison without the possibility of parole. Until then, Fernandez had never been charged with anything worse than stealing video games. Now, he’s sentenced to die in prison.

The two cases illustrate the profound inequities that have grown up in the juvenile justice system in the wake of a 1996 law aimed at cracking down on juvenile “super predators,” by requiring them to be tried in adult court where they face the maximum adult penalty for first degree murder, an investigation by the New England Center for Investigative Reporting has found. Before the change, juvenile killers could only be sentenced to serve until age 21 unless their case was transferred to adult court.”

The cover story for the January 2012 issue of Harper’s Magazine is Christopher Ketcham’s “Stop Payment!” which discusses efforts to rally homeowners to fight back and file lawsuits, if their mortgages were packaged for sale as financial products. Leading the efforts, and Ketcham’s story, are the people behind the National Homeowners Cooperative and the website Protect America’s Dream. Ketcham also discusses the landmark Landmark National Bank v. Boyd A. Kesler decision, in Kansas, which was one of the first rulings to note that packaged mortgages had failed to maintain properties’ title chain.

Portland, Maine - Colin Woodard’s fascinating investigative profile of Maine’s governor, written for The Portland Phoenix, explains how an improbable candidate and the Tea Party movement combined to win Paul LePage state-wide office. “[Paul] LePage’s actions in his first year in office suggest  that his poverty-to-power experience has led him to see the world from the top  down, and that helping the poor is best done by helping those who employ them  and by withdrawing support that might tempt them to depend on others, rather  than by working hard and earning the attention of benefactors. His journey  through the decline and collapse of Maine’s old industrial economy appear to  have taught him that environmental and labor protections kill jobs.

“His years in Waterville politics led him to believe he could get his way as governor by intimidating opponents with blistering, unconsidered public pronouncements, a notion he has only partially disabused himself of. ‘I have made a small adjustment in my ten two-letter words,’ the governor said last summer. ‘Now  instead of saying: if it is to be, it is up to me, now I say: if it is to be,  it is up to us.’ Time will tell if, having reached the top, the  governor can follow through on this adjustment.”

Washington – The Fund for Investigative Journalism is putting out a special call for proposals taking a sharply focused, investigative approach to two important public policy issues:  1) economic inequities in America, and 2) climate change.

These special grant opportunities have been made possible with a $50,000 grant from the Green Park Foundation. Grant proposals will be reviewed and voted upon by the board of the Fund for Investigative Journalism. The board is interested in funding projects that break new ground.  If a proposal incorporates angles that have received some attention in the media, applicants are asked to acknowledge the work already done, and explain how the proposed reporting project will dig more deeply and/or significantly advance the story.

The next deadline for proposals is Wednesday February 15 at 5pm Eastern time. Grants will be awarded in March.  Grant deadlines for April and September will be announced later in the year. Support for FIJ’s investigative reporting grant program comes from the Green Park Foundation, the Ethics and Excellence in Journalism Foundation, the Park Foundation, the Gannett Foundation, the Otto-Whalley Family Foundation, The Nara Fund, Inc., and individual donors.

Grant awards average $5,000. Applicants are encouraged to review detailed instructions on the FIJ website, and call or email executive director Sandy Bergo with any questions: , phone: 202-391-0206. Applications are filed online: www.fij.org.

Washington – The Fund for Investigative Journalism has moved to the National Press Club, on the 13^th floor of the National Press Building in Washington DC. The office is located in the newly renovated Eric Friedheim National Journalism Library, also home to the Press Club’s Journalism Institute which offers training, panel discussions and other professional development programs for journalists and as well as scholarships for journalism students.

Tha National Press Club facilities provide a hub for journalists and newsmakers from around the world with leaders from government, politics, business and the arts visiting each day to speak at public and private events.

With more than 3,500 members, the National Press Club is dedicated to the ongoing improvement of the profession of journalism.

The new address for FIJ is 529 14^th Street – 13^th floor, Washington DC 20045.

 The  American Journalism Review reports on the Schuster Institute’s initiative to create fellowships for Fund of Investigative Journalism grantees:

“‘Until someone figures out how to get more hours into a day than 24, it is absolutely mandatory that we find ways to collaborate,’” says Florence Graves, founding director of the Schuster Institute for Investigative Journalism.

So about a year ago, when Graves sought to launch a fellowship program that would provide resources for freelance journalists working on long-form investigative projects, she brought the idea to Sandy Bergo, executive director of the Washington, D.C.-based Fund for Investigative Journalism.

The union of the two agencies seems so logical — one of those ‘why didn’t I think of that?’ great ideas.”

The Schuster Institute for Investigative Journalism at Brandeis University and the Fund for Investigative Journalism (FIJ) in Washington, D.C. announce the launch of the Schuster Institute & Fund for Investigative Journalism Fellowships, an innovative investigative journalism collaboration with reporting on vital social justice and human rights issues as its core mission—reporting now endangered in mainstream newsrooms.

Based at Brandeis University’s Schuster Institute for Investigative Journalism, the Fellowship provides talented independent reporters with a blend of funding for their projects from the FIJ and professional guidance, including editorial and research support, from the Schuster Institute.

Drawing from a pool of journalists previously chosen to receive FIJ grants for their work, the Schuster Institute selected seven outstanding grant recipients as Fellows. Their selection was based on the potential impact of their projects and their demonstrated commitment to reporting about injustice.

The Fellows are investigating a wide range of significant issues—from undercover reporting about America’s food system to the residual health effects of undetonated munitions in Laos to child sexual abuse in Orthodox Jewish communities—as their work spotlights abuses of institutional power in the United States and globally.

FIJ provided the new Fellows with crucial startup funds to launch their time- and resource-intensive reporting. The Schuster Institute gives them an intellectual home where professional journalists provide editorial and strategic guidance and other support, including extensive efforts to promote and magnify the power of their findings using the Institute’s impact journalism strategy.

Newly hired Schuster Institute Executive Editor Melissa Ludtke and Founding Director Florence Graves are developing the Institute’s expanded fellowship program. (These new Fellows are joining seven other journalists who are already part of the Institute’s Ethics & Justice Investigative Journalism Fellowship Program.) Ludtke served for 13 years as editor of the Nieman Reports at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University and is a former Time correspondent and Sports Illustrated reporter.

Introducing the new Fellows:

Scott Carney is a California-based investigative journalist and author whose reporting on crime and corruption has lead him across the world to trace the trade and sale of humans and their body parts. He is the author of “The Red Market: On the Trail of the World’s Organ Brokers, Bone Thieves, Blood Farmers and Child Traffickers” (2011) and a contributing editor at Wired.

Karen Coates & Jerry Redfern are a print and photojournalist team who reside in New Mexico but report primarily from Southeast Asia. Their recent work has focused on Cambodia and Laos, including the severe danger to Laotian farmers whose fields are—literally—potential bomb fields of unexploded ordnance left over from four billion pounds of bombs dropped on Laos by the United States between 1964 and 1973 during the Vietnam War. Up to 30 percent of those bombs didn’t explode, and may remain a danger in the soil today. This year, ThingsAsian Press will publish their book “Eternal Harvest: The Legacy of American Bombs in Laos.”

Rebekah Cowell is a North Carolina-based investigative journalist whose work is focused on low-income, minority communities who live next to hazardous waste facilities but have no platforms to voice their concerns about diseases related to pollution exposures. She is currently working on a six-part environmental justice series underwritten by a George Polk Grant for Investigative Reporting.

Jennifer Margulis is an Oregon-based author, lecturer, narrative nonfiction writer, and editor who is investigating the overlooked dangers of some mainstream child-rearing practices, especially those where scientific evidence has been brushed aside in favor of special interests. Scribner will publish her next book in 2013: “The Business of Baby: How Corporations and Private Interests Skew the Way We Parent.”

Tracie McMillan  is a New York-based investigative journalist whose reporting explores economic inequality and the food system. For her forthcoming book, “The American Way of Eating: Undercover at Walmart, Applebee’s, Farm Fields and the Dinner Table,” McMillan went undercover to learn what it takes to stay well-nourished in low-income America.

Hella Winston is a New York-based investigative reporter, author, and sociologist currently focusing on serious abuses of power in Orthodox Jewish communities. She is the author of the book “Unchosen: The Hidden Lives of Hasidic Rebels,” for which she gained nearly unprecedented access and insight into highly insular Hasidic sects.

Who we are:

The Schuster Institute for Investigative Journalism at Brandeis University, founded in in 2004, is the nation’s first nonprofit investigative reporting center based at a university, and the only one with a central focus on social justice and human rights. The Schuster Institute launched its Ethics & Justice Fellowship program in 2009—and has now expanded the program in collaboration with the Fund for Investigative Journalism—to support independent journalists covering vital issues in the public interest. Staff reporters and Fellows publish their work in a wide variety of outlets and cover topics such as: human trafficking and modern-day slavery; failures in public health care systems; fraud and corruption in international adoption; political asylum seekers in the United States; and political prosecutions in the federal justice system.

The Fund for Investigative Journalism was founded in 1969 by the late Philip M. Stern, who was convinced small amounts of money invested in the work of determined journalists would yield enormous results in the fight against racism, poverty, corporate greed, and governmental corruption. Stern’s theory proved true in the Fund’s first year, when a tiny grant of $250 enabled reporter Seymour Hersh to begin investigating a tip concerning a U.S. Army massacre at the Vietnamese village of My Lai. A subsequent Fund grant of $2,000 allowed Hersh to finish reporting the story. During the following three decades, the Fund has awarded more than $1.5 million in grants to freelance reporters, authors and small publications, enabling the publication of more than 700 stories and broadcasts and some 50 books. Fund-supported projects have won a wide array of journalistic honors, including Pulitzer Prizes, National Magazine Awards, the Raymond Clapper Award, the George Polk Award, the Sigma Delta Chi Award, and many others. The Fund’s Executive Director is Sandy Bergo, a former award-winning television investigative producer and freelance writer.

New Orleans – As Bob Butler and Jessica Williams report for The Lens, “Each day, after wrapping up work as a streetcar operator, Kisa Holmes drives by to check on the house she bought in the Upper 9^th Ward just weeks before Hurricane Katrina – a house that now sits empty, gutted and deteriorating because she can’t afford to fix it…. Before making the first mortgage payment, Holmes, her husband and their five children fled 90 miles to Kentwood to escape Katrina. Like many others, she thought she’d be home in a couple of months.

She was fully insured, including flood coverage, and believed that she would soon have the money to repair the house. But she was unprepared for the push from her bank to use her insurance money to pay off her mortgage, with which she complied, thinking it was in her best interest. Instead, it made the Holmes family the free-and-clear owners of a nearly worthless piece of property. Worse, that decision hampered the family’s ability to take full advantage of key federal disaster recovery money…. Though more complicated than most, Holmes’ story is just one of many behind the more than 40,000 blighted homes across the city, despite concerted and growing anti-blight efforts.”

New Haven, Connecticut – As Rob Gurwitt reports for the Connecticut Health I-Team: “Each time John Dempsey Hospital performs a cardiac valve surgery, the hospital receives a median payment of $82,589 from Medicare – about $23,000 more than the median paid to Danbury Hospital for the same surgical procedure.

A pacemaker implant at Dempsey, part of the University of Connecticut, costs Medicare about $20,000—$2,200 more than Yale-New Haven, $3,500 more than Bridgeport Hospital and $6,300 more than the Hospital of Central Connecticut.

Federal reimbursements for surgical procedures swing widely among Connecticut hospitals, a C-HIT analysis of available Medicare data shows, with Dempsey receiving a higher rate than other hospitals for most procedures. Yale-New Haven, Bridgeport and Windham hospitals also were consistently among the top five in Medicare reimbursements, according to the data.

Experts say the variation in Medicare payments is due to a variety of factors, including the type of hospital (teaching or non-teaching), regional wages and salaries, the income mix and sickness of patients and the number of tests and services provided…

…[T]here are other factors that push up costs at some hospitals, including a higher use of intensive-care beds, more visits by multiple doctors, and more tests such as MRIs and CT scans. Those treatment variables are attracting increasing scrutiny in Connecticut, as the state moves towards implementing health care reform and examines how hospitals are paid for services.”

WASHINGTON – (December 21, 2011) The Board of Directors of the Fund for Investigative Journalism has awarded $34,000 in grants for seven independent investigative projects in the United States.

The grants cover reporting expenses such as the cost of traveling to interview sources. The Fund’s grant-making program is made possible by support from the Gannett Foundation, the Ethics and Excellence in Journalism Foundation, the Park Foundation, the Green Park Foundation, and generous donations from individuals.

The next deadline for submitting grant proposals is Wednesday, February 15, 2012.

Journalists awarded grants in the most recent round are:

Susan Chandler, a Chicago-based journalist who specializes in financial reporting

Susan Greene, a Denver-based journalist who specializes in social justice issues

Myron Levin, founder and editor of FairWarning

Ian Shearn, a New Jersey-based journalist with a background in government and political corruption investigations

Heather Smathers, a Arizona-based journalist who specializes in government accountability reporting

Isaiah Thompson, senior staff writer, Philadelphia City Paper

Amanda McAllister Wilson, Inter Press Service

In addition to funding, grantees receive editorial guidance from mentors through a partnership with Investigative Reporters and Editors.

During 2011, FIJ has awarded $152,000 to journalists working on 39 investigative reporting projects in the United States and overseas.

The Fund for Investigative Journalism is an independent, non-profit organization that has supported hundreds of public service reporting projects since 1969, when it provided funding for Seymour Hersh to investigate the massacre of Vietnamese civilians by American soldiers in My Lai. His stories won the Pulitzer Prize.

Read more about FIJ-supported projects and instructions for grant applications at www.fij.org. Journalists with questions about the application process are encouraged to contact executive director Sandy Bergo by phone, 202-391-0206, or email, .

Washington City Paper features The Fund for Investigative Journalism as one of “Seventy local nonprofits that are worth your time and money,” in a special project with the Catalogue for Philanthropy: Greater Washington. The Catalogue vetted and selected FIJ to be recognized as one of the best small nonprofits in the Washington DC region. FIJ is the first journalism organization to make the list.

Lakewood, New Jersey – As Hella Winston reports for The Jewish Week, “.. a Jewish religious tribunal [is] operating as a kind of shadow justice system, adjudicating sexual abuse cases without the involvement of law enforcement… It is a world where victims and perpetrators alike are subjected to threats of social ostracism and, in some cases, physical harm for non-compliance with the ‘system.’ … ‘Most victims of abuse and parents in Lakewood are afraid to speak up because [they fear being threatened by rabbis],’ Debbie Rudin, a victim of childhood sexual abuse who now lives in Lakewood, told The Jewish Week.”

(Washington) – During the past year and  a half, more than twenty experienced reporters and news executives have mentored FIJ grantees, lending a hand in the reporting, writing and editing of their work.

The executive director of Investigative Reporters and Editors (IRE), Mark Horvit, recruits the mentors from the roster of IRE members. In so doing, he has lined up some of the biggest names in the investigative news business as volunteers.

The FIJ/IRE mentoring program is patterned on IRE’s longstanding initiative that pairs young and veteran journalists who meet one another at the annual IRE conference.  In the case of FIJ grantees, many are themselves experienced reporters, but are working alone as freelancers and are grateful to have someone on-call to act as a sounding board.

Mentors make themselves available to brainstorm about how to get a specific piece of information or pry public records loose from uncooperative government agencies. And they often read or view stories before grantees submit them to an editor.

As one FIJ-supported freelancer described the value of a mentor:  “Someone willing to read a first draft, before it goes to the magazine, [is] like manna from heaven.”

The mentoring relationship typically lasts the duration of the project, but for Wanjohi Kabukuru of Kenya and mentor Ron Nixon, a New York Times reporter, it has been extended beyond that. They’ve collaborated on two investigations.

Kabukuru consulted with Nixon as he investigated pesticides dumping and malaria vaccine experimentation for New African magazine.

Nixon’s editorial guidance helped “ensure solid investigations, proper language, objective analysis and accurate attribution,” said Kabukuru. When Nixon learned that both he and Kabukuru planned to attend a reporting conference in Africa, they made arrangements to meet in person. After the conference, Kabukuru sent a message to FIJ that discussing his work with Nixon “opened my eyes to whole new dimension of investigative journalism.”

Kristin Palitza, who wrote about child laborers in the tobacco fields of Malawi for the UK Guardian, brainstormed about ideas with mentor David Kaplan, editor at large for the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project. Palitza said Kaplan helped “move the story from a Malawian issue to a story of international importance” and shared contacts with news organizations to help get the story
published.

“The program confirmed to me that even for mid-career journalists, it is of great value to have the support of a senior journalist and be able to benefit from his/her wealth of experience. It keeps you motivated, gives you new ideas and makes you push a little further,” said Palitza.

FIJ is grateful to the following mentors who have worked with grantees since the program began last year:

Sarah Cohen, Duke University

David Donald, Center for Public Integrity

Mark Feldstein, University of Maryland

Manny Garcia, El Nuevo Herald

Andy Hall, Wisconsin Center for Investigative Reporting

Dianna Hunt, Fort Worth Star-Telegram

David Kaplan, Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project

Kevin Keeshan, KGO-TV, San Francisco

Mike McGraw, Kansas City Star

Josh Meyer, Medill School of Journalism

Jim Neff, Seattle Times

Deb Nelson, University of Maryland

Chuck Neubauer, Washington Times

Ron Nixon, New York Times

Lois Norder, Fort Worth Star-Telegram

Judy Pasternak, Bloomberg News

Robert Rosenthal, Center for Investigative Reporting

Fred Schulte, Center for Public Integrity

Ken Silverstein, Harper’s Magazine

Adam Thompson, ProPublica

Steve Weinberg, Missouri School of Journalism

Alison Young, USA Today

Wanjohi Kabukuru (left) with mentor Ron Nixon (right)

“One of the Best” 2011-2012

Washington (October 21, 2011) The American Journalism Review profiles the Fund for Investigative Journalism and its support of the “independent, intrepid reporter” with a “long track record of underwriting accountability reporting.”

Contact: Sandy Bergo,  202-391-0206

(Washington) – The Fund for Investigative Journalism is proud to announce continuing support from the Park Foundation for the Fund’s grant program for independent watchdog journalists.

The Foundation, based in Ithaca, New York, has awarded a grant for $75,000 that will give critical assistance to reporters working on domestic reporting projects. This is the second year that the Park Foundation has awarded a grant to the Fund.

The Fund makes grants to reporters who have the ideas, sources, and know-how to produce groundbreaking investigative journalism, but need help paying the expenses of reporting.

“We are especially grateful that the Park Foundation has chosen to support the Fund as part of its mission to promote public service journalism,” said Sandy Bergo, executive director of the Fund. “In the past year the support from the Park Foundation launched many important investigations into environmental and government accountability issues.”

Examples of completed projects are an investigation of New York City firefighter fatalities and an investigation of unnecessarily hazardous conditions encountered by Gulf Spill clean-up workers. The grants from the Park Foundation produce more than a dozen investigative reporting projects each year.

“This grant will inspire and invigorate the kind of investigative reporting that is so deeply needed in the US at this time,” said Brant Houston, president of the board of the Fund for Investigative Journalism.

The Fund for Investigative Journalism is also supported by the Ethics and Excellence Foundation, the Green Park Foundation, and the Gannet Foundation.

This year, the Fund was recognized as one of the Washington DC region’s best nonprofits, and will be featured in the 2011-12 Catalogue for Philanthropy. The Fund is the first journalism organization to be listed in the Catalogue, which is distributed to local foundations and philanthropists.

The Fund also depends on donations from individuals. Donations can be made online, www.fij.org, or by mail to the Fund for
Investigative Journalism, 1023 15^th Street NW – Suite 350, Washington DC 20005.

The Wall Street Journal, calls Robert Neuwirth’s book, “Stealth of Nations,” a “fascinating tour” of the informal, unofficial economy, known as System D, which is operated by unlicensed entrepreneurs. “‘Stealth of Nations’ is a valuable book because it challenges conventional thinking about what it means for an economy to develop.”

From the book review: ”System D is full of surprises. From Linda Chen, who trades counterfeit auto parts, we learn that China has a hierarchy of fake merchandise: The manufacturers of high-quality fakes offer guarantees and take back defective products, but with low-quality fakes it’s caveat emptor.”

“Mr. Neuwirth argues that System D fosters entrepreneurship while also meeting governments’ needs to encourage employment; in some cases, a modest amount of tax revenue is also generated. Moving into the ‘formal’ sector, he suggests, may not be a goal to which entrepreneurs in poor countries aspire.”

From Kenya, Wanhoji Kabukuru reports for NewAfrican Magazine: “Malaria kills more people in Africa than HIV-Aids. Therefore attempts to produce a vaccine against the disease should normally be received with joy. But no. The trial stages of a new vaccine, RTS,S have raised a storm in Africa.” The criticism centers on clinical trials of the vaccine that are conducted on infants.

As reported by Guy Taylor in Salon.com, the federal government has been rubber stamping Big Pharma’s requests to  increase production of the much-abused prescription drug, Oxycodone: “One of the most disturbing things about the prescription pain pill abuse epidemic is that it could have been avoided, or at least mitigated, if the DEA had fulfilled the responsibilities vested in it under federal law. That’s the view of Gene Haislip, who until his retirement in 1997 spent 17 years as head of one of the least-publicized law enforcement entities in Washington: the Drug Enforcement Administration’s Office of Diversion Control.”

Rave review in Barron’s for  “All The Justice Money Can Buy,” a Fund for Investigative Journalism Gene Roberts book award winner: “Author Snigdha Prakash was embedded in the legal team representing two plaintiffs, who in turn served as test cases for a large pool of people making similar claims. The seven-week trial determined whether Merck failed to warn doctors adequately about research indicating that Vioxx, its blockbuster prescription painkiller, caused heart attacks. Readers seeking a rigorous, impartial evaluation of the merits of the litigation should look elsewhere. But as an inside account of an extraordinary team of lawyers at work, All the Justice Money Can Buy is a first-rate legal thriller.”

WASHINGTON – (October 6, 2011) The Board of Directors of the Fund for Investigative Journalism has awarded $40,000 in grants for nine independent investigative projects in the United States and overseas.

The grants cover travel and other reporting expenses for investigative stories that otherwise would not be told. Significant support from the Park Foundation, the Gannett Foundation, the Ethics and Excellence in Journalism Foundation, the Green Park Foundation, and generous donations from individuals made these grants possible.

This year so far, FIJ has awarded $118,000 to journalists working on 32 investigative reporting projects.

Journalists awarded grants in the most recent round are:

Idris Olalekan Akinbajo, investigative journalist from Nigeria

Ken Englade, non-fiction author specializing in trial coverage

Elizabeth Grossman, environmental science reporter

Lorie Hearn, Investigative Newsource

Kevin Heldman, New York-based crime and justice reporter

Chris Kromm, publisher, Southern Exposure

Paige McClanahan and Felicity Thompson, Sierra Leone-based reporters

Rocco Rorandelli, photojournalist with TerraProject, based in Italy and Catherine Segal, Paris-based journalist

Susan Southard, Arizona-based author

The topics of grantees’ investigations are confidential until completed. In addition to critical funding, grantees receive editorial guidance from mentors through a partnership with Investigative Reporters and Editors.

Recently completed projects include:

• Trevor Aaronson’s report, “The Informants,” published by Mother Jones, on sting operations conducted by the FBI in the War on Terror. Aaronson describes how FBI operatives use the threat of deportation to recruit informants, then use their informants to lure alleged terrorists into schemes where the means, the method, and the opportunity to commit acts of terror are cooked up by the FBI.

• An investigation by the Florida Center for Investigative Reporting into the misuse of federal stimulus funds in Florida schools. The nonprofit news center found that schools shored up their budgets, which were sagging due to the recession, rather than making school improvements as intended. Now that the recession is continuing to depress revenues from local taxing bodies, the schools will have to dig themselves out of even deeper financial holes and make drastic cuts.

• “Render Unto Rome,” a groundbreaking book by Jason Berry, who has investigated sexual abuse and now financial abuses within the Catholic Church over his long, distinguished career. Berry’s most recent book reveals how bishops use their power to close parishes and sell off property despite the wishes of parishioners — even in cases of parishes that were thriving financially. Church property is sold to bail out other parishes with expensive legal bills and court battles over allegations of sexual abuse. Berry was recently the subject of a profile in the Washington Post, which focused on the tension between his Catholic faith and his dogged reporting on the Church.

• An investigation for The Guardian of the use of child laborers to pick tobacco in Malawi. The children are paid extremely low wages and develop nicotine poisoning in the fields, inhaling fumes equivalent to smoking 30 cigarettes a day. Malawi’s economy is dependent on its tobacco production, with 70 percent of its exports coming from this industry. The country also has the highest incidence of child labor in southern Africa, with 90 percent of all underage children working on farms.

• The Chicago Reporter took an in-depth look at the minority contracting program in Illinois. It discovered that work that is supposed to be designated for companies owned by people with disabilities instead goes to sheltered workshops – which employ disabled people in supervised settings and pay less than minimum wage. They also found that the state isn’t meeting its own goals for minority contracts, and that for those minority contractors who get work, it doesn’t necessarily expand their business in any lasting way – the ultimate goal of this set-aside program.

The Fund for Investigative Journalism is an independent, non-profit organization that has supported hundreds of public service reporting projects since 1969, when it provided funding for Seymour Hersh to investigate and expose the massacre of Vietnamese civilians by American soldiers in My Lai. His stories won the Pulitzer Prize.

Read more about FIJ-supported projects and instructions for grant applications at www.fij.org. The next deadline to submit proposals is Tuesday, November 1. Journalists with questions about the application process are encouraged to contact executive director Sandy Bergo by phone, 202-391-0206, or email, fundfij@gmail.com.

WASHINGTON (October 3, 2011) — The Fund for Investigative Journalism (FIJ) is seeking grant proposals for independent investigative projects from journalists who need support for travel and other reporting expenses.

The deadline for proposals is 5 p.m. EST, Tuesday November 1.

FIJ is interested in proposals from reporters investigating issues in the United States, especially those relating to governmental accountability, the environment, and local or regional issues with national implications. Applications from ethnic media are strongly encouraged. Applications for international projects are currently closed.

These grants are made possible through generous funding from the Gannett Foundation, the Park Foundation, the Green Park Foundation, the Ethics and Excellence in Journalism Foundation, and the public.

The Fund is supported by the John S. and James L. Knight Chair in Investigative and Enterprise Reporting at the Journalism Department in the College of Media at the University of Illinois.

For more than forty years, the Fund for Investigative Journalism has supported work by independent and freelance reporters who do not have the resources to do their investigations. Grants average $5,000. The awards support the costs of reporting, such as travel and document production expenses. In limited cases, small stipends will be considered as part of the overall award.

FIJ accepts applications through its website, www.fij.org.

Questions about the application process should be directed to executive director Sandy Bergo, fundfij@gmail.com.

In partnership with Investigative Reporters and Editors, the FIJ also matches grant recipients with veteran journalists who serve as mentors, at the recipient’s request.

The Fund depends on donations from foundations and individuals. Donations can be made online or by mail to The Fund for Investigative Journalism, 1023 15^th Street NW – Suite 350, Washington DC 20005.

# # #

For more information contact:

Sandy Bergo

202-391-0206

fundfij@gmail.com

McNelly Torres reports for the Florida Center for Investigative Reporting: As part of the 2009 economic stimulus package, millions of federal dollars flowed to Florida’s public school districts. The money was intended to benefit low-performing schools as way of closing the so-called achievement gap. Starved for cash as a result of plummeting real estate values and dwindling property tax revenues, Florida school districts used these hundreds of millions to put off the inevitable — difficult budget cuts.

Now, two years after the first stimulus dollar rolled in, Florida’s public school system is learning difficult financial lessons. School districts throughout Florida are laying off teachers, closing programs and scrambling to identify other significant cost-saving measures — all problems made worse by the fact that Florida’s school districts used the stimulus money in large measure to delay needed cuts.

Jason Berry – author of Render Unto Rome, is the subject of a Washington Post profile in its Style section. The article focuses on the how Berry continues to practice his faith, while investigating the sexual abuse of children by priests, and most recently in this book, lifting the veil of secrecy that has cloaked the church’s financial affairs. Berry has received several awards from the Fund for Investigative Journalism during his long, distinguished, career.

Click here to read the Jason Berry profile.

Kristin Palitza reports in The Guardian on child laborers in the tobacco fields of Malawi: At the height of the tobacco harvest season, Malawi’s lush, flowing fields are filled with young children picking the big green-yellow leaves. Some can count their age on one hand. Since the handling of the leaves is done largely without protective clothing, workers absorb up to 54 milligrams of dissolved nicotine daily through their skin, equal to the amount of 50 cigarettes, according to researchers at College of Public Health at the University of Kentucky, Lexington.

And more than 90% of Malawi’s tobacco is bought by two US-based leaf buyers, Universal Corporation and Alliance One International, which resell it to international tobacco firms. Their main clients are two of the world’s biggest cigarette manufacturers, Philip Morris (Marlboro) and British American Tobacco (Lucky Strike). Consequently, Malawi’s tobacco is found in the blend of almost every cigarette smoked in the west. Photography by Kristin Palitza.

The winner of the Robert I. Friedman award, Stealth of Nations by Robert Neuwirth, is coming out this fall.

When we think of the informal economy, we tend to think of crime: prostitution, gun running, drug trafficking. Stealth of Nations opens up this underground realm, showing how the worldwide informal economy deals mostly in legal products and is, in fact, a ten-trillion-dollar industry, making it the second-largest economy in the world, after that of the United States. Having penetrated this closed world and persuaded its inhabitants to open up to him, Robert Neuwirth makes clear that this informal method of transaction dates back as far as humans have existed and traded, that it provides essential services and crucial employment that fill the gaps in formal systems, and that this unregulated market works smoothly and effectively, with its own codes and unwritten rules.

Combining a vivid travelogue with a firm grasp on global economic strategy—along with a healthy dose of irreverence and skepticism toward conventional perceptions—Neuwirth gives us an eye-opening account of a world that is always operating around us, hidden in plain sight.

The Chicago Reporter’s investigation of the State of Illinois’ contracts with minority and disabled business owners has found limited impact, missed goals. Photo by: Jason Reblando.

“Empty Jackpot“: Illinois celebrates its program to steer state contracts to businesses owned by minorities, women and people with a disability. But a closer look shows the state may not be fulfilling its goals.

“Less Shelter“: The vast majority of state money marked for going to disabled business owners isn’t going to people with disabilities. Instead, 98 percent of that money goes to “sheltered workshops”—a group operation usually run by a nonprofit where disabled people can work in a supervised setting.

In its September/October issue, City Limits, an investigative magazine based in New York City, explores whether the New York Fire Department has learned lessons from Sept. 11 and - as important - after firefighters die in routine fires.  “The prospect of another Sept. 11 is as unlikely as it is terrifying. Fires in basements and factories and two-story homes, however, will happen all the time. So it’s important to also learn the lessons taught by the 43 other FDNY fatalities that occurred in the decade before and the decade since the World Trade Center disaster. Since 2006, City Limits has been using the Freedom of Information Law to gather official FDNY reports on line-of-duty deaths from 1991 to the present. These documents and others, along with interviews with current and former FDNY personnel, fire experts and kin of the deceased, point to a set of factors that contributed to those deaths, and the many reports on Sept. 11 detail the lessons that disaster had to teach. FDNY reports and interviews with experts indicate whether the lessons from these many fatalities have led to meaningful change in New York City…” Read the series reported by Jarrett Murphy. Photo: Marc Fader.

Winner of FIJ’s Gene Roberts Book Award, “All the Justice Money Can Buy,” by Snigdha Prakash, is being favorably reviewed: “One can read Snigdha Prakash’s disturbing book on two levels: either as in–depth reporting of a major corporate scandal, or as a legal thriller, the denouement of which is left hanging until the final pages. On any
score, she offers a first–rate read, rich both with personality sketches and comprehensible explanations of complex medical issues.

Her subject is the meteoric rise and free fall of Vioxx, among the hottest of the “miracle drugs” of the early 21st century. Merck & Co., Inc., the makers of Vioxx, promised relief to millions of people who suffered from arthritic pains and other aches, but the drug soon came under legal attack for allegedly causing heart attacks and was withdrawn from the market…” Reviewer: Joseph C. Goulden

Scott Carney, Jason Miklian, and Kristian Hoelscher report on Fortress India: Why is Delhi building a new Berlin Wall to keep out its Bangladeshi neighbors? “Felani wore her gold bridal jewelry as she crouched out of sight inside the squalid concrete building. The 15-year-old’s father, Nurul Islam, peeked cautiously out the window and scanned the steel and barbed-wire fence that demarcates the border between India and Bangladesh. The fence was the last obstacle to Felani’s wedding, arranged for a week later in her family’s ancestral village just across the border in Bangladesh.” Read the full report in Foreign Policy. Photo courtesy of Kristian Hoelscher.

For Mother Jones, Trevor Aaronson writes: “The FBI has built a massive network of spies to prevent another domestic attack. But are they busting terrorist plots-or leading them?” Here is an excerpt from his article, “The Informants”:

“Here’s how it works: Informants report to their handlers on people   who have, say, made statements sympathizing with terrorists. Those names   are then cross-referenced with existing intelligence data, such as   immigration and criminal records. FBI agents may then assign an   undercover operative to approach the target by posing as a radical.   Sometimes the operative will propose a plot, provide explosives, even   lead the target in a fake oath to Al Qaeda. Once enough incriminating   information has been gathered, there’s an arrest—and a press conference announcing another foiled plot.

If this sounds vaguely familiar, it’s because such sting operations are a fixture in the headlines. Remember the Washington Metro bombing plot? The New York subway plot? The guys who planned to blow up the Sears Tower? The teenager seeking to bomb a Portland Christmas tree lighting? Each of those plots, and dozens more across the nation, was led by an FBI asset.

Over the past year, Mother Jones and the Investigative  Reporting  Program at the University of California-Berkeley have  examined  prosecutions of 508 defendants in terrorism-related cases, as  defined by  the Department of Justice…”

Click here for the main article, a searchable database of terrorism prosecutions, a sidebar on the making of an FBI superinformant, a glossary of terms, and a transcript of a conversation secretly recorded by an informant.

Click here for the National Public Radio report on Aaronson’s findings.

Mary Lou Simms investigated the U. S. Department of Agriculture program that exterminates wild birds and animals for the McClatchy-Tribune News Service. “Wildlife Services is the little-known branch of the USDA deemed largely responsible for geese slaughters coast to coast. Buried under several layers of bureaucracy, Wildlife Services prefers to stay under the radar. However, a copy of a 2010 report obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request indicates that U.S. taxpayers are subsidizing a $126.5 million program that exterminates more than 4 million wild animals annually, including thousands of geese. The agency also has come under fire for its use of sodium cyanide, a poison placed in devices called M-44′s, which its literature says is used to control coyotes, wild dogs and foxes preying on livestock.” Click here for the full report and here for her report on humane alternatives.

Bogota, COLOMBIA — As Isabel Morales and Julian Resendiz report for the Dallas Morning News: The death of her 20-year-old son at the hands of Colombia’s military was but the beginning of Gloria Mancera’s ordeal. In the four years that followed, Mancera, 44, fled her small farm in the town of Granada with her daughters in tow, changed her name, slept on the floor of a relative’s house in Bogota and scavenged meals from trash bins. This happened, she says, because she questioned the army’s account of her son’s death. Aurelio Gallego Mancera was shot dead on March 12, 2007 by soldiers from the army’s Mobile Unit 12 based in Granada, about 90 miles from the capital. The military said the man was a FARC guerrilla killed in a firefight. Photos: William Fernando Martinez.

In “Render Unto Rome: The Secret Life of Money in the Catholic Church,” author Jason Berry exposes the secrecy and deceit that run counter to the values of the Catholic Church. There is no doubt that historically the Catholic Church has been one of the great engines of charity in history. But what happens to tens of millions of dollars turned over to officials at the highest ranks, no questions asked, for their discretionary use? The Vatican has never revealed its true net worth; the controversial Vatican Bank is off the books – a black hole in the annual financial statement. Today the church bears scrutiny by virtue of the vast amounts of money (nearly $2 billion in the United States alone) paid out to victims of clergy abuse. Amid mounting diocesan bankruptcies, bishops have been selling off whole pieces of the infrastructure – churches, schools, commercial properties – while the nephew of one of the Vatican’s most powerful cardinals engaged in a lucrative scheme to profiteer off the enormous downsizing of American church wealth. Before “Render Unto Rome,” no major book has examined the church’s financial underpinnings and practices with such journalistic force.

Garry Wills, in his review for the New York Times, writes “Jason Berry, the reporter who broke several of the priest abuse scandals of recent times, finds the same pattern of deception, denial and subterfuge in the church’s handling of money as in its treatment of pedophiles.”

Press Release

Contact information: Sandy Bergo, 202-391-0206

Washington DC-based Fund for Investigative Journalism Chosen for 2011-12 Catalogue for Philanthropy: Greater Washington

The Catalogue for Philanthropy: Greater Washington is proud to announce that The Fund for Investigative Journalism (FIJ) has been selected to be featured in the 2011-12 Catalogue. A panel of 110 expert reviewers from area foundations, corporate giving programs, and peer non-profit organizations evaluated 270 applications; FIJ is one of 70 outstanding nonprofits to be featured this year.

Now in its ninth year, the Catalogue’s mission is to generate visibility and resources for the best community-based nonprofits. According to Barbara Harman, President and Editor of the Catalogue for Philanthropy: Greater Washington, “We know that nonprofits have had another very difficult year, and the economy continues to create challenges: dollars are down and need is up. Individual donors can continue to make a real difference – as they did last year — keeping great organizations afloat during these tough times.”

The Catalogue raised $2.6 million in 2009-10, $1.5 million to date in 2010-11 (and counting), and nearly $14.6 million since its inception in 2003.

The Catalogue enables smaller non-profits to tell their stories to individuals who would otherwise never hear them, and to encourage those individuals to get engaged and to give. It also provides charities with a stamp of approval that tells donors they can invest with confidence because the Catalogue vets its family of nonprofits with great care.

Twenty-five thousand individuals and hundreds of family foundations will receive copies of the print Catalogue in November, and others will visit the Catalogue website (cfp-dc.org) – the only regional philanthropy site of its kind in the country. It includes a gift registry, gift cards, a section especially for kids, and other great giving options. The website also connects donors with volunteer opportunities, events, news, videos, and more.

“Charities were selected for excellence, cost-effectiveness, and impact” Harman said. “These are certainly among the best community-based nonprofits in the Washington region.”

A year after the BP oil catastrophe in the Gulf of Mexico, a growing number of cleanup workers and coastal residents are reporting debilitating health problems associated with exposure to toxic chemicals in crude oil and dispersants. Faced with inaction from the federal government, victims are organizing a grassroots movement to demand action. The investigation also examined the broader problem of the energy industry’s impact on community health in the Gulf and the political power wielded by oil companies and other industry interests to thwart regulatory reform. Read the five-part series published by Facing South.

Connecticut’s private employers have seen the price of health insurance premiums for workers and their families rise 102 percent since 1999, an analysis by the Connecticut Health Investigative Team shows. The amount that families pay for this coverage rose an even steeper 107 percent.

The increases came during a decade when median household income in Connecticut grew by less than one third.

C-HIT’s review also found wide geographic variations in the insurance premiums charged for Connecticut families.

Click here to read more of C-HIT’s findings.

“All the Justice Money Can Buy” is the true-life story of a courtroom showdown between the man many consider the best trial lawyer of his generation and one of the nation’s richest and most-respected corporations.

Recipient of the 2009 Gene Roberts Book Award, investigative journalist and former National Public Radio (NPR) reporter Snigdha Prakash was embedded with the plaintiffs’ team for the seven-week trial, and takes us into the trenches of the tough—and dirty—battle between corporate interests and the individual that plays out in the courts. From early mornings when Lanier works in his hotel suite, to the daily post-mortems after court, and late nights in the plaintiffs’ “war room,” Prakash shadows Lanier and his team.

With its bird’s-eye view of the strategic thinking and meticulous planning that undergird Lanier’s seemingly unrehearsed performances in court, and of the well-oiled machine of lawyers and assistants that backs his every move, “All the Justice Money Can Buy” is a fast-paced, often funny journey behind the front-lines of a high-stakes, 21st century legal trial. Along the way, Prakash renders a piercing portrait of the challenges that await those who would take on corporate interests.

Part corporate expose´ and part legal thriller, “All the Justice Money Can Buy” is a gripping—and topical—read for our scandal-plagued times. Prakash will read from her book and sign copies at Politics and Prose, 5015 Connecticut Avenue NW, Washington DC, this Saturday, June 18, starting at 6pm.

WASHINGTON – (June 8, 2011) The Board of Directors of the Fund for Investigative Journalism has awarded eleven grants to independent watchdog journalists in the United States, Asia, Africa, and Europe.

The board awarded $35,200 in grants to cover travel and other reporting expenses for investigative stories that otherwise would not be told. Significant support from the Ethics and Excellence in Journalism Foundation, the Park Foundation, the Green Park Foundation, the Gannett Foundation, and generous donations from individuals made these grants possible.

The Fund has supported investigative journalism by independent journalists since 1969.

Recently, projects completed with FIJ support include the book “All the Justice Money Can Buy: Corporate Greed on Trial,” by Snigdha Prakash. Her book chronicles the seven-week trial of the lawsuit filed by patients allegedly injured by the painkiller Vioxx. With unusual all-hours access to the plaintiff’s litigation team, she is able to tell the inside story of their preparation and strategy, with anecdotes from early morning and late night strategy sessions.  Prakash won the $25,000 Gene Roberts book award in 2009.

City Limits Magazine’s May/June issue contains a report funded by FIJ, “Behind Bars: Female Inmates, Male Guards and Sex Crimes in New York’s Prisons.” The Magazine’s Kelly Virella investigated why New York has some of the highest rates of prison inmate sexual abuse in the country, how the prison system handles abuse complaints, and how little authorities do to prevent it. In some cases, City Limits found, guards initiate “romances” with women inmates.

In North Carolina, Rebekah Cowell is writing a series of articles for The Independent Weekly, documenting how low-income neighborhoods become sites for other peoples’ waste. She finds a lax official attitude toward cleaning up the mess in poor neighborhoods, and government units that buy land cheaply without concern for the health of nearby residents.

Joel Brinkley’s book, “Cambodia’s Curse: The Modern History of a Troubled Land,” was also published this Spring. He discovered “willful management” of the country, malnourishment, rampant government corruption, and a high incidence of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder among those who survived the Khmer Rouge era. He wrote: “These afflictions have darkened the entire nation’s personality.”

Read more about FIJ-supported projects at www.fij.org where the next deadline for applications will be posted.

Among the journalists receiving recent awards:

Bonnie-Sue Hitchcock, a public radio reporter

Burt Hubbard, reporting for I-News: The Rocky Mountain Investigative News Network

Wanjohi Kabukuru, reporting for New African Magazine

Susan Mernit, editor/publisher of Oakland Local

Jarrett Murphy, editor-in-chief, City Limits Magazine

Mike Sherry, founder, Midwest Center for Investigative Reporting

Guy Taylor, world news blogger and multi-media journalist & editor

Brad Tyer, Montana-based author and blogger

Stefano Valentino, based in Rome and Brussels, reporting on human rights and natural resources issues

and Colin Woodard, Maine-based author, magazine writer, and blogger

The topics of grantees’ investigations are confidential until completed. In addition to critical funding, grantees receive editorial guidance from mentors through a partnership with Investigative Reporters and Editors.

The Fund for Investigative Journalism is an independent, non-profit organization that has supported hundreds of public service reporting projects since 1969, when it provided funding for Seymour Hersh to investigate a tip about the massacre of Vietnamese civilians in My Lai. His stories won the Pulitzer Prize.

Journalists with questions about the grant application process are encouraged to contact executive director Sandy Bergo by phone, 202-391-0206, or email, fundfij@gmail.com.

In City Limits, an investigative magazine that covers New York City, Kelly Virella examines what sexual abuse reports reveal about how New York’s prisons track and investigate sexual misconduct, the history of legal wrangling and labor rules behind prison policies, and the nuances of sex and “romance” in women’s prisons. The investigation reveals facts crucial to understanding and preventing prison sex abuse.

From North Carolina, Rebekah Cowell’s 3 part series reported on how low income communities get stuck with other people’s waste for Independent Weekly, the weekly paper covering The Triangle region of Raleigh, Durham, and Chapel Hill.

Part 1.  “The Waste Land: The people of Lincoln Heights live among three city dumps. This is the story of their war on trash.”

Part 2. ”Living on the Edge: Residents endure legacy of old Chatham County landfill.”

Part 3. “Digging Deeper: In Orange and Guilford counties, neighbors fight landfill expansions.”

Orla Ryan’s Chocolate Nations exposes the true story of how the treat we love makes it onto our supermarket shelves. From bean to bar – where does your chocolate come from? The very word “chocolate” hints of the forbidden and a taste of the decadent. Yet the story behind the chocolate bar is rarely one of luxury. From the thousands of children who work on plantations to the smallholders who harvest the beans, Chocolate Nations reveals the hard economic realities of our favorite sweet. This vivid and gripping exploration of the reasons behind farmer poverty includes the human stories of the producers and traders at the heart of the West African industry. Orla Ryan shows how only a tiny fraction of the cash we pay for a chocolate bar actually makes it back to the farmers, and she sheds light on what Fairtrade really means on the ground.

“Merchants of Peril: Deadly Pesticides Post Death, Pollution for EA,” by Wanjohi Kabukuru. They are hazardous, portend grim and fatal implications and adversely affect all living things. And East Africa is still stocking them.  Click here to read.   



Joel Brinkley’s investigative reporting in modern Cambodia  found ”willful mismanagement” of the country.

In 1992, Cambodia became a United Nations protectorate – the first and only time the UN tried something so ambitious. What did the new, democratically-elected government do with this unprecedented gift? Brinkley found a people in the grip of a venal government that refuses to provide even the most basic services without a bribe.  He learned that nearly half of the Cambodians who lived through the Khmer Rouge era suffer from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder and other debilitating mental illnesses. These afflictions have darkened the entire nation’s personality. Brinkley uncovered a malnourished populace that still lives as Cambodians did 1,000 years ago, while government officials divert unimaginable sums into their own pockets. These ministers are the only overweight people in a nation where the hungry waste away.

Moment Magazine – “They Had The Wrong Name At the Wrong Place At The Wrong Time,” an investigation by Moment’s editor and publisher, Nadine Epstein, into discrimination against Jews who worked for the U.S. Army Corps at Fort Monmouth, NJ in the wake of Julius Rosenberg’s arrest.

 Mother Jones writer Mac McClelland has been nominated for the prestigious National Magazine Award for her article on refugees from Burma, “For Us Surrender is Out of the Question,” reported with financial support from the Fund for Investigative Journalism. She is a nominee in the Feature Writing category, which honors original, stylish storytelling.

An investigation by Asra Q. Nomani with a team of 32 Georgetown University students under the direction of Georgetown University Journalism Director Barbara Feinman Todd. Sponsored by the Center for Public Integrity’s International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, with major funding from the Ethics and Excellence in Journalism Foundation, and a travel grant from the Fund for Investigative Journalism.

The Pearl Project spent more than three years investigating the roles of 27 men linked to the 2002 kidnapping and murder of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl.

Washington ( February 16, 2011) – The Fund for Investigative Journalism is proud to announce continuing support for its grant program for independent journalists from the Ethics and Excellence in Journalism Foundation, based in Oklahoma City.

The Foundation has announced a grant for $75,000 that will give critical assistance to reporters who have the ideas, sources, and know-how to produce groundbreaking investigative journalism, but need help paying the expenses of reporting.

The Fund is particularly grateful for the demonstration of support from the Foundation, as it plays a leading role among philanthropic efforts to sustain and grow nonprofit investigative journalism enterprises in the United States.

“The Foundation has played a crucial role in the resurgence of the Fund as a provider of assistance to independent journalists throughout the U.S.,” said Brant Houston, president of the Fund and Knight Chair of Investigative & Enterprise Reporting at the University of Illinois. “Without this support, the Fund would be unable to help journalists who are doing some of the best state and regional investigative reporting.”

With this latest award, the Foundation has given the Fund seven grants over the past several years, which the Fund has used to help dozens of investigative journalists.

The Fund is also supported by the Park Foundation, the Gannett Foundation, the Green Park Foundation, and contributions from the public.

The Ethics and Excellence in Journalism Foundation recently distributed a total of $1.5 million to 21 journalism organizations, including the Fund for Investigative Journalism.

WASHINGTON – (January 25, 2011) With financial support from our newest donors – the Gannett Foundation and the Green Park Foundation – the Board of Directors of the Fund for Investigative Journalism has awarded twelve grants to journalists investigating abuse of power, environmental degradation, and corruption in the United States, Asia, Africa, and South America.

The board awarded $43,000 in grants to cover travel and other reporting expenses for investigative stories that otherwise would not be told. The Fund also has received significant support from the Ethics and Excellence in Journalism Foundation to make grants for local and regional stories, many with national implications, and for investigations by ethnic media.

The Fund has supported investigative journalism by independent journalists since 1969. Recently, projects completed with FIJ support include “The Afterlife of Electronics,” an investigation of toxic waste created -  rather than properly disposed  -  by recycling operations in the state of Colorado. The report by I-Team: The Rocky Mountain Investigative News Network tells how electronic waste gets dumped overseas or acquired by backyard operations that generate more hazardous waste as amateurs attempt to mine gold out of computer junk.

The book Biocidal, written with FIJ support, was recently published, telling the history of PBCs. The book focuses on the manipulation of regulatory agencies and the continuing environmental damage since PCBs were banned. And from East Africa, the story of hazardous agricultural chemicals that continued to be imported from America for sale in developing countries, long after they were banned in the West.  Read more about FIJ-supported projects at www.fij.org where the next deadline for applications will be posted.

The most recent awards were granted to the following journalists:

Bob Butler, California-based investigative reporter

Lynne DeLucia, the Connecticut Health Investigative Team

Matt Jenkins, contributing editor, High Country News

Rita Henley Jensen, Women’s eNews

Jennifer Margulis, Oregon-based author, lecturer, narrative non-fiction writer, editor

Maggie Mulvihill, The New England Center for Investigative Reporting

Hella Winston, New York based freelance writer

Scott Carney, California-based investigative reporter and author

Mauricio Monteiro Filho, Brazilian reporter and documentary filmmaker

Dan Grossman, science and environmental writer and contributor, National Geographic News Watch

Kristin Palitza, photojournalist and writer based in South Africa

Hilke Schellmann and Habiba Nosheen, multi-media journalists

The topics of grantees’ investigations are confidential until completed. In addition to critical funding,  grantees receive editorial guidance from mentors through a partnership with Investigative Reporters and Editors.

The work of FIJ grantees is accomplished with the generous support from individuals, and with grants from foundations including the Ethics and Excellence in Journalism Foundation, the Park Foundation, the Green Park Foundation, and the Gannett Foundation.

The Fund for Investigative Journalism is an independent, non-profit organization that has supported hundreds of public service reporting projects since 1969, when it provided funding for Seymour Hersh to investigate a tip about the massacre of Vietnamese civilians in My Lai. His stories won the Pulitzer Prize.

Journalists with questions about the grant application process are encouraged to contact executive director Sandy Bergo by phone, 202-391-0206, or email, fundfij@gmail.com.

Ted Dracos’ book, Biocidal; Confronting the Poisonous Legacy of PCBs, on the role of the chemical industry in contaminating the world with PCBs has been published by Beacon Press. Since PCBs were outlawed in 1976, most people think the problem has been solved. However, PCBs can be found everywhere: the highest mountain peaks to the deepest ocean trenches, in the air, in our veins – even in the tissue of newborn babies. Dracos reports for the first time just how industry manipulated scientific studies and all three branches of government, so the public would believe PCBs no longer posed a threat. Biocidal also presents a blueprint for reducing the impacts of PCBs and other industrial chemicals.

What really happens to e-waste. A report from I-News:  The Rocky Mountain Investigative News Network. Read here what the nonprofit learned about partnering with media.

WASHINGTON – (October 27, 2010) The Board of Directors of the Fund for Investigative Journalism has awarded grants totaling $42,000 for 11 investigative reporting projects to be published or broadcast in the U.S., and for two investigations overseas.

The Fund has supported investigative journalism since 1969. Among recent projects completed with FIJ support are Poisoning the Press, by Mark Feldstein, a biography of muckraker Jack Anderson, Yellow Dirt, by Judy Pasternak, the story of decades of uranium mining on Navajo lands and its devastating health effects, and “Stolen Futures,” a series by The Chicago Reporter on youthful offenders who are serving hard time for non-violent felonies. A longer list can be found at www.fij.org.

The most recent awards were granted to the following journalists:

Mike Anane, a freelance environmental reporter based in Ghana

Rebekah Cowell, a North Carolina based writer on social justice issues

Andy Hall, Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism

Christopher Ketcham, a magazine journalist whose interests range from political corruption to “the foolishness of mountain lion hunting in Oregon”

Chris Kromm, Facing South/Southern Exposure

Alden Loury, The Chicago Reporter

Tracie McMillan, author, formerly managing editor of City Limits

Ngoc Nguyen, a California-based environmental journalist

Habiba Nosheen and Anup Kaphle, multimedia video and website producers

Marilyn Snell, California based freelance writer and editor

Kelly Virella, City Limits

Forrest Wilder, a Texas-based magazine writer

Many of the grants support multi-media projects, ethnic media, and emerging media, including newly established nonprofit investigative journalism centers. The topics of grantees’ investigations are confidential until completed. In addition to critical funding for out-of-pocket expenses, grantees receive editorial guidance from mentors through a partnership with Investigative Reporters and Editors.

Several recipients this year received grants under a program funded by the Ethics and Excellence in Journalism Foundation, (www.journalismfoundation.org) which donated  $100,000 to support metro and regional investigative reporting and ethic media watchdog reporting.

The Fund is now accepting applications for its next grant cycle, with a deadline of Thursday, December 9. We are issuing a special call for projects focusing on environmental and governmental accountability issues as a result of a generous grant from the Park Foundation in Ithaca, New York, (www.parkfoundation.org).  The Board continues to be interested in proposals that cover local and regional issues, or are written for ethnic media.

The Fund for Investigative Journalism is an independent, non-profit organization that has supported hundreds of public service reporting projects since 1969, when it provided funding for Seymour Hersh to investigate a tip about the massacre of Vietnamese civilians in My Lai. His stories won the Pulitzer Prize.

The Fund is supported through contributions from individuals and grants from private foundations. Journalists with questions about the application process are encouraged to contact executive director Sandy Bergo, by phone, 202-481-1218, or email, .

“Yellow Dirt: An American Story of a Poisoned Land and a People Betrayed,” by Judy Pasternak, was released in September 2010.  Pasternak investigated the toxic aftermath of uranium mining on Navajo Indian land for the material used in atomic bombs in the 1940s. Radioactive dirt contaminated drinking water, playgrounds, and homes. The poisoning of the land and its people continues to the present day.

“Normal At Any Cost: Tall Girls, Short Boys, and the Medical Industry’s Quest to Manipulate Height,” by Susan Cohen and Christine Cosgrove, has won a book award from the National Association of Science Writers. The book, published in 2009, was written with support from the Fund for Investigative Journalism.

As police pinned Derrick Reed to the hood of a squad car, one thought raced through his mind: “Oh, man. I’m going to go away. I’m 17 now.”

The East Garfield Park teen’s coming-of-age story isn’t filled with school dances or football-team tryouts. Rather, the day that shaped his adolescence was Nov. 30, 2009.

(Read the series in The Chicago Reporter.)

When a billion gallons of coal ash broke loose from a holding pond at the Tennessee Valley Authority’s power plant near Harriman, Tenn. in December 2008, registered nurse Penny Dodson was living nearby with her 18-month-old grandson, Evyn. Like most of her neighbors, Dodson never gave much thought.. (Read the 5-part series in Facing South)

WASHINGTON – (July 1, 2010) The Board of Directors of the Fund for Investigative Journalism has awarded grants totaling $48,000 for thirteen investigative reporting projects that will be published or broadcast by local, regional, and overseas media.

The names and projects of recipients are confidential until their work is completed, but the topics supported by the latest round of Fund grants include investigations of the misuse of federal funds, corrupt public servants in the US and abroad, and unmitigated environmental hazards.

Many of the grants will support multi-media projects and emerging media, including nonprofit investigative centers and ethnic media in the United States. In addition to domestic stories, the Board approved funding for investigative projects in Laos, Iraq, Afghanistan, South America, and Africa.

The Fund for Investigative Journalism is an independent, non-profit organization that has supported hundreds of public service reporting projects since 1969, when it provided funding for Seymour Hersh’s Pulitzer Prize-winning investigation into the massacre of Vietnamese civilians in My Lai.

Since then, recipients of Fund grants have won nearly every major award in journalism, including another Pulitzer Prize, the George Polk Award, and two National Magazine Awards. 

Recently released work has continued to win accolades. Columbia University graduate students Habiba Nosheen and Hilke Schellmann were finalists for the 2010 Investigative Reporters and Editors Student Award for their documentary on unlicensed surrogacy agencies. Reporting by Scott Carney on investigations of children kidnapped in India for adoption in America won the 2010 Payne Awards for Ethics in Journalism award. 

Links to their award winning work can be found on the FIJ website, www.fij.org, along with groundbreaking reports on the devastating second-generation health consequences from Agent Orange used during the Vietnam War, the abuse of prisoners at secret detention sites in Afghanistan, and the recycled use of lead and arsenic-laced ash from coal-burning power plants in construction materials throughout the United States. 

Writers supported by the Fund have impact well after their initial work is published. Jason Berry’s reporting on sexual abuse by a prominent Roman Catholic priest was cited as groundbreaking in recent coverage by the New York Times. 

The Fund was founded by Philip Stern, a progressive-minded philanthropist who believed that by putting a small amount of money into the hands of aggressive reporters, they would generate stories that would, as he put it, help “balance the scales of justice.”  The Fund supports investigative projects solely through contributions from individuals and grants from private foundations such as the Ethics and Excellence in Journalism Foundation.

Todd Melby and Diane Richard’s radio documentary No Brother of Mine offers an unflinching look at U.S. sex offender policy that reaches beyond the headlines and into the lives of real people. Award-winning independent producers Todd Melby and Diane Richard dare to humanize men that society demonizes: convicted sex offenders. Melby and Richard were granted extraordinary access to interview four offenders, first while the subjects were incarcerated in a Minnesota prison, and after being released as they look for work and forge new relationships. Reported over a period of four years, the documentary examines the efficacy of in-prison treatment programs and provides a nuanced examination of law enforcement efforts to keep the public safe using online registration, residency restrictions and civil commitment. The one-hour program aired on public radio stations nationwide, including KFAI (Minneapolis/St. Paul), WBEZ (Chicago), NHPR (New Hampshire Public Radio), KUT (Austin, Texas), KUOW (Seattle) and Minnesota Public Radio. Click here to listen and here for the story behind the story.

Anand Gopal’s article in The Nation exposed how innocent people were killed in U.S. military raids on homes in Afghanistan; others disappeared following the raids. Conducted at night, these raids are even more feared and hated than Coalition air strikes. Gopal also investigates detainee abuse in secret jails on US military bases in Afghanistan. He reports that prisoner mistreatment shifted to these remote secret “field detention sites” after abuses were exposed at the Bagram Air Base prison. The story, America’s Secret Afghan Prisons prompted a re-examination of U.S. battlefield detention methods in Afghanistan by U.S. military leadership.

Kenyan Journalist John Kamau unearthed archival documents that for the first time revealed just how land initially occupied by white settlers in colonial Kenya was transferred to politicians and their allies shortly after the country became independent. These unjust land practices have had a lasting impact in Kenya, contributing to political violence after the 2007 elections. Kamau details how funds from both the World Bank and UK Government – meant to settle the landless in the 1960s – were squandered. The series of 22 articles, published by both Daily Nation and Business Daily, collected evidence, named those who masterminded this land-grabbing in Kenya, and demonstrated how this history informs current politics.

Trevor Aaronson traveled to rural India to investigate the reasons why more than 200,000 Indian farmers have killed themselves in the last decade. Published in Columbia City Paper, The Suicide Belt examined how loans used to buy expensive, genetically modified cotton seeds are trapping subsistence farmers in a cycle of debt that ends in shame and, in the most tragic cases, suicide.

MAC McCLELLAND – In the April 2010 issue of Mother Jones, Mac McClelland reports on refugees who are documenting cases of human rights violations, torture, and genocide in Burma. She also turned her research into the book For Us Surrender Is Out of the Question: A Story from Burma’s Never-Ending War, published by Soft Skull Press.

Shadow of Doubt: Probing the Supreme Court, by Marites Vitug, is the first book to lift the veil off the elusive Philippine Supreme Court. It looks at the inner workings of the Court, the least scrutinized of the three branches of government, including how the Justices arrive at decisions and the dynamics between the Supreme Court and the executive branch. The secrecy surrounding the Court has a direct impact on the quality of appointments. Vitug writes that loyalty to the appointing power is more important than merit in selecting people for the Supreme Court in the Philippines.

TIM MATSUI – The Seattle photojournalist traveled to Cambodia to document human trafficking. His photos and text vividly illustrate the sexual exploitation of poor young women and the labor exploitation of illegal migrant workers. When he returned to the United States, Matsui traveled widely to display his photography, and contributed to a multi-media investigative series on trafficking published online by KUOW Radio (Seattle).

Christopher Pala investigated the activities of a Honolulu-based fishing advisory council called Wespac. He found that it liberally distributed grants and travel perks to leading politicians in the Commonwealth of the Northern Marianas for years to ensure their loyalty. They then obligingly backed Wespac in vociferously opposing the creation by President George W. Bush of the Marianas Trench National Marine Monument, which would have protected a corner of the Pacific archipelago from commercial fishing. Their campaign resulted in a much smaller protected area than the White House had first envisioned, with few practical benefits.

WASHINGTON (February 23, 2010) — The Fund for Investigative Journalism is proud to announce it has received a $100,000 grant from the Ethics and Excellence in Journalism Foundation, based in Oklahoma City.

The grant will support reporters working on investigative stories that focus on their states and local communities. It also will provide funds for investigations done by reporters in the ethnic media.

“This grant will address a pressing need for watchdog reporting in regions where newsroom cutbacks have hollowed out investigative staffs and in communities covered by the ethnic media,” said Brant Houston, president of the Fund.

Houston said the Foundation, www.journalismfoundation.org, is playing a key role in ensuring that investigative reporting continues to flourish across the nation by supporting the Fund and other nonprofit journalism efforts.

WASHINGTON (January 15, 2010) — Sandy Bergo, an experienced investigative reporter, has been chosen to serve as executive director of The Fund for Investigative Journalism.

Bergo, who replaces Cheryl Arvidson, has previously worked as an investigative producer for WBBM-TV (Chicago) and WJLA-TV (Washington DC), a senior writer for the Center for Public Integrity, and a freelance investigative reporter for the Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, and The Washington Monthly. She shared in many awards for her work in television, including the DuPont-Columbia Award, the Peabody Award, and the Investigative Reporting and Editors Award.

The Fund is a nonprofit organization with a 40 year history of supporting independent investigative reporters with grants ranging from $500 to $10,000. These grants help launch groundbreaking work exposing corruption, malfeasance, incompetence, and societal ills. Shortly after the public-spirited philanthropist Philip M. Stern founded the Fund, it awarded small grants to pay Seymour Hersh’s expenses for investigating the My Lai massacre.

WASHINGTON (January 7, 2010) – Chicago Tribune reporters Jason Grotto and Tim Jones authored a chilling five-part series describing the devastating health consequences suffered by U.S. military veterans and Vietnamese nationals who were exposed to Agent Orange and other dioxin-laced defoliants during the war in Vietnam. Birth defects have extended the impact to a second generation. But the U.S. government has done little to make amends, either in the United States or overseas.

Greg Brosnan and Jennifer Szymaszek produced a video, Guatemala: A Tale of Two Villages, that appears on Frontline Rough Cuts website. It tells about the Guatemalans who were rounded up in a large immigration raid in Postville, Iowa, and sent back to their home country.

Murder in the High Himalaya, a book by Jonathan Green about the brutal murder of a 17-year-old nun fleeing to India by Chinese border guards. Will be published in the Spring of 2010.

“Murder in the High Himalaya is the unforgettable account of the brutal killing of Kelsang Namtso—a seventeen-year-old Tibetan nun fleeing to India—by Chinese border guards. Witnessed by dozens of Western climbers, Kelsang’s death sparked an international debate over China’s savage oppression of Tibet. Adventure reporter Jonathan Green has gained rare entrance into this shadow-land at the rooftop of the world. In his affecting portrait of modern Tibet, Green raises enduring questions about morality and the lengths we go to achieve freedom.”

Thomas A. Bass’ The Spy Who Loved Us was published by PublicAffairs in 2009.

Pham Xuan An was a brilliant journalist and an even better spy. A long-time correspondent for Time and friendly with all the legendary reporters covering Vietnam, he was an invaluable source of news and font of wisdom on all things Vietnamese. At the same time, he was a masterful double agent, a North Vietnamese intelligence agent whose secret reports were so admired by Ho Chi Minh that he clapped his hands with glee on receiving them and exclaimed, “We are now in the United States’ war room!” An inspired shape-shifter who kept his cover in place until the day he died, Pham Xuan An ranks as one of the preeminent spies of the twentieth century.”

Pratap Chatterlee’s Halliburton’s Army: How a Well-Connected Texas Company Revolutionized the Way America Makes War, published by Nation Books, was written up in Vanity Fair and praised in other reviews. The book received FIJ’S 2005 Robert I. Friedman award.

“From Halliburton’s vital mission as the logistical backbone of the U.S. occupation in Iraq—without it there could be no war or occupation—to its role in covering up gang-rape among its personnel in Baghdad, Halliburton’s Army is a devastating exposé of corporate malfeasance and political cronyism. In shocking detail it shows how Halliburton and its former subsidiary Kellogg, Brown & Root (KBR) really do business in Iraq, and around the world. “

Susan Cohen and Christine Cosgrove’s Normal at Any Cost, was the recipient of FIJ’s $25,000 book award in 2003. The book about hormones that affect the growth of children, was published in March 2009 and widely reviewed.

Good Germs, Bad Germs: Health and Survival in a Bacterial World by Jessica Snyder Sachs, winner of the 2005 book award, has been published by Hill and Wang and is available in bookstores. Her argument is that “antibiotic resistance now ranks among the gravest medical problems of modern times”.