The Fund for Investigative Journalism

The nation’s premier association of investigative journalists, Investigative Reporters and Editors (IRE), has named two Fund for Investigative Journalism (FIJ) grantees as finalists for the 2013 IRE Awards.

 “The Cash Machine,” published by Philadelphia City Paper and reported by FIJ grantee Isaiah Thompson, was honored as a finalist in the Multiplatform category. The investigation revealed that the Philadelphia District Attorney’s office uses the civil asset forfeiture system to seize millions of dollars in cash from individuals stopped by police, without regard to the person’s guilt or innocence.

And “The American Way of Eating: Undercover at Walmart, Applebee’s, Farm Fields and the Dinner Table,” by Tracie McMillan, has been honored as a finalist in the Book category. Her book, published by Simon & Schuster, investigated the exploitation of agricultural workers, and looked at why typical food production and food service employees do not earn enough to buy nutritious food for their families.

The Fund for Investigative Journalism is proud to have supported such important work, and congratulates all the journalists who have been recognized as finalists and winners of the 2013 IRE awards.

The Fund’s grant-making program is made possible by support from the Park Foundation, the Gannett Foundation, the Ethics and Excellence in Journalism Foundation, The Herb Block Foundation, the Green Park Foundation, the Morton K. and Jane Blaustein Foundation, The Nara Fund, the Otto-Whalley Family Foundation. and generous donations from family foundations and individuals.

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 also supports the Fund, as does the Dykema law firm.

The board of the Fund for Investigative Journalism meets three to four times a year to award grants to investigative reporters. The next deadline for grant applications is June 10, 2013.

Journalist and author Brad Tyer moved to Montana for the picture-postcard scenery, looking for pristine waters where he could set down a canoe. What he found was entirely different. From the book: “I gradually began to gather that the Clark Fork [River] wasn’t quite what I thought it was. The river I had shadowed on my drive in had long been choked by the detritus of a century’s worth of copper mining upstream. The ‘Treasure State’ of Montana’s license plates was sourced in metal, and it had been mined for a century in Butte… Butte copper had wired America, strung across the country to deliver residential electricity and telephone connections, feeding power to unbridled industrial growth and cladding the bullets that won two world wars.”

But by 1983, the toxins created by copper production had turned the Clark Fork River’s upper reaches into the largest Superfund site in the US.

Tyer’s book, Opportunity, Montana: Big Copper, Bad Water, and the Burial of an American Landscape, published by Beacon Press, tells the story of the attempts to restore and rebuild a poisoned river. Tyer finds that in the process, “millions of tons of toxic soils are being removed and dumped – once again – in Opportunity,” a small forgotten town in Montana.

From VTDigger in Vermont, the story of a project that would lure foreign investors with the prospect of US residency - on hold after running into trouble with Vermont authorities.

An excerpt from the article by Nat Rudarakanchana and Anne Galloway: “Last spring, state officials became aware that a key participant in the project recently stepped down from a leadership role in the company. Richard Parenteau, the founder of DreamLife, who state officials say is now a ‘background investor,’ was convicted of perjury in Quebec last summer, according to court documents, after a decade-long dispute over a will. State officials say as a result of the conviction, Parenteau, a former Rock Forest (Quebec) chief of police, is no longer able to cross the border for meetings in Vermont. Parenteau has also been accused of violating labor rules in Quebec, according to court documents.

Over the last 20 years, Parenteau has created and dissolved more than two dozen companies in Florida and Vermont, some of which list his sons Marc-Andre and Richard Jr. as business associates, according to information from state websites. Five of the entities bear the DreamLife name, including an insurance company, a real estate firm and a finance company, all three of which are now inactive.”

From Madeline Ostrander, reporting for The Nation, the story of California’s Cap-and-Trade program, and whether it will be fair to communities suffering from the state’s worst air pollution.

Excerpts: “California has been nearly alone in its efforts to curtail greenhouse gases, after attempts to pass federal climate legislation collapsed in Congress in 2010 and several states abandoned plans to pursue their own regulations. The nation’s only other program, the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic states’ Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, regulates power plants alone. But this spring, several Democrats, including Senator Barbara Boxer, are trying to push new climate bills through Congress. AB 32’s success or failure could buoy or sink the prospects for federal legislation—and influence the course of similar initiatives in other countries…

“…cap and trade applies to California’s biggest and most notorious polluters. Starting this year, the refineries in Wilmington, for example, will need to acquire allowances or offsets for every ton of greenhouse gases they emit. Each year, they’ll decide whether it’s cheaper to cut carbon emissions at their facilities or buy more rights to pollute.”

Photo Courtesy of: Francis Reynolds / The Nation

Washington – The Fund for Investigative Journalism’s next application deadline is Monday, June 10 at 5pm Eastern time.

Applications are being sought for grants to cover reporting costs for investigative reports that expose wrongdoing and break new ground. Grants average $5,000.

The online application form and instructions can be found here: http://fij.org/grant-application/

Potential applicants are invited to call or email executive director Sandy Bergo with questions about the application process. Phone: 202-662-7564. Email: email hidden; JavaScript is required.

For journalists interested in applying later in the year, deadlines will be announced for September and December, 2013.

The Future Journalism Project, in an interview with Executive Director Sandy Bergo, reports on how the Fund for Investigative Journalism began, and how it continues to make grants to support investigative reporters.

Applications for the current round of grants are due today, March 11.

Click here to listen to the 10 minute interview.

Washington - The Fund for Investigative Journalism is pleased to announce the continuing generous support  from the Ethics and Excellence in Journalism Foundation, based in Oklahoma City.

The Foundation has given a $100,000 grant to support a program of assistance to investigative reporters who are pursuing stories in the public interest, but need funding to cover the expenses of reporting.

The Fund is particularly grateful for the demonstration of confidence from the Foundation, one of the leaders in philanthropic support for non-profit newsrooms that are re-invigorating investigative journalism throughout the United States.

The Fund is among fourteen investigative reporting organizations that received a combined total of $1.9 million in support from the Foundation in its most recent round of grant-making.

“The Foundation is a leader in the movement to find new, innovative models that will keep investigative journalism alive and well,” said Brant Houston, president of the Fund. “But it also recognizes the importance of those organizations – such as the Fund – that have played a key role for decades in fostering superb and independent investigative stories.”

The Foundation’s support has meant that the Fund has been able to make grants for dozens of investigative journalism projects, many of them winning prestigious journalism awards. The Fund’s grants to journalists average about $5,000.

The Fund is also supported by The Herb Block Foundation, the Park Foundation, the Gannett Foundation, the Green Park Foundation, The Nara Fund, the Morton K. and Jane Blaustein Foundation, private family foundations, and individuals. 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 also supports the Fund, as does the Dykema law firm.

The Fund is currently accepting applications for grants. The next deadline is Monday March 11 at 5pm Eastern time.

Donations to the Fund can be made online, www.fij.org, or by mail to the Fund for Investigative Journalism, 529 14^th Street NW – 13^th floor, Washington DC 20045.

From Leah Samuel for PublicSource, the story of “Lottery Losers” and broken promises to use a substantial portion of Lottery proceeds for programs that assist the elderly.

An excerpt: “Lottery ticket sales have increased by five percent over the past five years, according to the Pennsylvania Lottery. But funding has decreased overall for county agencies that are supposed to receive lottery proceeds, resulting in complaints about long waiting lists for some services.

‘We do have a waiting list for our lottery-funded care management program,’ said Mary Phan-Gruber, deputy administrator for Allegheny County’s Area Agency on Aging. ‘We have 200 to 300 people on the waiting list for that program.’

County-based agencies provide direct services to the elderly, such as meal deliveries, health assessments, programs at senior centers and abuse investigations…

..Community services for the elderly didn’t get additional money because it was sent to long-term-care homes instead.

‘It really violates the spirit of the lottery law,’ said M. Crystal Lowe, executive director of the Pennsylvania Association of aging agencies.

Photo: by David Bennett

From Rome, Jason Berry reports for GlobalPost on the battle between the Catholic Church leadership, and the nuns in the United States. In a series of reports entitled, “A New Inquisition: The Vatican’s Investigation of American Nuns,” Berry reports that the Bishops investigating US nuns have poor records on sex abuse cases and that disinformation permeates the Vatican crackdown. From his series: “As the Vatican lowers a curtain of scrutiny across communities of religious women in America, a small but resonant chorus of critics is raising an issue of a hypocrisy that has grown too blatant to ignore. The same hierarchy that brought shame upon the Vatican for recycling clergy child molesters, a scandal that rocked the church in many countries, has assumed a moral high ground in punishing the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, a group whose members have put their lives on the line in taking the social justice agenda of the Second Vatican Council to some of the poorest areas in the world.

“Many nuns from foreign countries wonder if the investigation is an exercise ‘in displaced anger,’ as one sister puts it, for the hierarchy’s failure in child abuse scandals across the map of the global church.”

Washington – The Fund for Investigative Journalism is pleased to announce The Herb Block Foundation has awarded $10,000 to support the Fund’s grant-making program for independent investigative reporters.

The grant underwrites a program that pays the reporting expenses of reporters who have the ideas, sources, and know-how to produce groundbreaking investigative journalism, but lack the resources to complete their projects.

The grant to the Fund was awarded as part of The Herb Block Foundation’s “Defending Basic Freedoms” program, which supports nonprofits that safeguard freedoms guaranteed in the Bill of Rights, work to eliminate prejudice, and make government agencies more accountable to the public.

The Foundation was established with funds bequeathed by The Washington Post editorial cartoonist Herb Block, who died in 2001. The cartoonist, known as Herblock, used his talents to bring injustices to light, won three Pulitzer Prizes, and shared in a fourth.

“It is a special honor to receive this support, given in the spirit of a man who dedicated his life to exposing the abuse of power,” said Brant Houston, president of the Fund’s board of directors.

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

In four rounds of grant-making during the past year, the Fund’s Board of Directors has awarded $237,000 for 62 investigative reporting projects.

In addition to support from The Herb Block Foundation, the Fund for Investigative Journalism receives foundation support from the Ethics and Excellence in Journalism Foundation, the Park Foundation, the Gannett Foundation, the Green Park Foundation, The Nara Fund, the Morton K. and Jane Blaustein Foundation, from private family foundations, and from individuals. 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 also supports the Fund.

Donations to the Fund can be made online, www.fij.org, or by mail to the Fund for Investigative Journalism, 529 14^th Street NW – 13^th floor, Washington DC 20045.