The past two weeks have brought in three substantial funding grants for 2019. The Weissman Family Foundation donated $75,000 to again support FIJ reporting grants in the coming year. In addition, The Nara Fund donated $21,000. Of that, $6,000 is earmarked for continuing diversity outreach. Jonathan Ingbar, president of the Fund wrote, “All of us at The Nara Fund are inspired by the ...
FIJ is happy to announce two new board members, Alan Berlow and Anu Narayanswamy. Alan Berlow is a freelance reporter, a former foreign correspondent for NPR, and author of Dead Season, A Story of Murder and Revenge. His work has appeared in The New York Times Magazine, The Atlantic and Harpers. Berlow has himself received two FIJ grants, in 1977 and ...
In two stories for The Intercept, FIJ/Schuster Institute diversity fellow Danielle Mackey reports on the difficulty and politics of leaving criminal gangs in El Salvador. The first piece follows a 21-year-old who wants to retire after 10 years of murder and extortion with the gang Barrio 18. He hopes for a new life working with an evangelical Christian church. To ...
Over five months, PublicSource in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, investigated the use of “piggybacking” contracts used by city and county governments in the region. The practice allows some government officials to circumvent contract vetting processes by “piggybacking” on contract requests already approved by other agencies. Doing so can save governments time and money by avoiding negotiation and approval steps. But critics say the ...