Like many struggling small colleges, North Carolina’s St. Andrews University has stayed open by deferring maintenance, living on credit and keeping quiet about problems to avoid scaring away students. Pam Kelley, writing for The Assembly with support from the Fund, found that this once-respected liberal arts college is a cautionary tale of what happens when survival becomes a college’s top ...
In Iowa and other corn-growing states, nitrogen increasingly is spread on fields to keep nutrients in the soil in the event of heavy rain. But the chemical ends up in waterways and harms the environment. Veteran environmental reporter Keith Schneider, writing in Circle Blue, is reporting on the dangers of toxic pollution from farmland runoff. He found that many farmers often apply ...
Groups in former President Donald Trump’s political network have reported using about $130 million in donor funds to pay lawyers and cover legal costs since he began running for office, according to an analysis by OpenSecrets supported by the Fund. As the former president faces mounting legal issues, his political operation steered more money than ever into covering legal fees. Some ...
Reveal, with support from the Fund, revisited a story produced in 2020 in collaboration with a Guatemalan journalist José Rubén Zamora, who is in prison after his newspaper published more than 100 stories about corruption in Guatemala’s government. The hour-long story looked at the root causes of corruption and impunity in Guatemala and how they have prompted generations of Guatemalans to ...
As part of an ongoing investigation of sexual abuse in health care settings in Utah, reporter Jessica Miller of the Salt Lake Tribune found that Utah licensors allowed a therapist to continue practicing after sex abuse allegations. The therapist had built a reputation as someone who could help gay members of the Mormon church. But at least four patients allege ...
Reporters Lois Parshley and Sean McDermott, in a story co-published by Alaska Public Media and Grist with support from the Fund, examined how mining companies are gearing up to extract minerals across Alaska as the state looks beyond producing fossil fuels. They found that environmental assessments have not been conducted on the planned mining and the community members have serious, ...
In 1965, Emzie Wilder’s brother, John Wesley Wilder, was shot and killed by police officer Edward Alton Nugent in Ruston, Louisiana. Today Emzie is 92 years old. Nugent is 84 and has never been held accountable. Reporter Ben Greenberg, with support from the Fund and working with Type Investigations, uncovered evidence that the shooting was unprovoked. For a new podcast ...
For the Maine Monitor, Samantha Hogan found that the state’s 16 judges who manage probate cases, including those that establish guardianships for people unable to care for themselves, operate with few methods to ensure safe outcomes. With support from the Fund, Hogan found that few probate courts run criminal background or bankruptcy checks on potential guardians for aging adults, people ...
Domestic violence often leads to homelessness, especially when the accused abuser controls the money. Compounding the challenges, survivors of domestic violence in Washington State often can’t secure court-ordered protection that could help keep them safe, despite recent reforms by Washington State lawmakers. In an investigation of conditions that domestic violence survivors confront in Washington, reporter Kelsey Turner, writing in InvestigateWest ...
Oscar Lopez and Frank Main, writing for the Chicago Sun-Times, conducted a months-long investigation on the Guerreros Unidos drug cartel and its operation in Chicago, unraveling how heroin trafficking on commercial buses was an integral part of one of the most horrific crimes in modern Mexican history: The disappearance and presumed massacre of 43 students in 2014 in Iguala. The ...