Grantees’ Stories

New York Focus and Columbia Journalism Investigations, with support from the Fund, dug into conviction integrity units across New York State that were created to re-examine criminal convictions that District Attorneys’ offices may have gotten wrong. The team’s reporting found that these units have fallen short of their promise. Nearly half of them have yet to support a single exoneration. ...

Georgia’s child welfare agency, tasked with protecting children from mistreatment, contracted with a company to drug test parents and produce results that were crucial to decisions on custody. With support from the Fund, Jake Shore with The Current GA found that the state’s Division of Family and Children Services (DFCS) learned that the company’s laboratory was under federal investigation for ...

Schools have faced an onslaught of cyberattacks since the pandemic disrupted education five years ago, but officials have kept these attacks secret and repeatedly given false information to students, parents and staff, according to an investigation by The 74, co-published in Wired. With support from the Fund, The 74 built a database of more than 300 school cyberattack incidents. The ...

Blood Vines, an eight-episode narrative podcast series produced with support from the Fund, chronicles Chris Walker’s three-year-long investigation of one of the largest wine frauds in U.S. history and the mysterious murder of a central witness. Walker interviewed sources, reviewed case exhibits, filed records requests and gathered archival audio. His investigation explored the full breadth of a massive grape-switching fraud ...

Covington Independent Public Schools in Kenton County, Kentucky, was found to be in violation of federal sex-discrimination laws after three students made reports of sexual harassment to one of their teachers, according to an investigation by Nathan Granger for LinkNKY, a news outlet serving Northern Kentucky. With support from the Fund, Granger spent a year investigating reports centered around former ...

Over the past two years, the Utah Inland Port Authority (UIPA) has expanded dramatically around the receding Great Salt Lake, sparking opposition from environmentalists, public health advocates and rural community members. An investigation by Brooke Larsen for High Country News reveals that despite public comments expressing overwhelming opposition, UIPA has pushed forward – and is working closely with elected officials ...

Thousands of families migrated from Venezuela and other countries to Chicago, New York and other cities in the U.S. – and their children, who had already faced significant trauma, had significant mental health needs. With support from the Fund, reporters from El Tiempo Latino and Chicago Health Magazine spent a year reviewing data and interviewing dozens of experts and families ...

The Utah Investigative Journalism Project found an array of allegations against one man, Andrekus Rowe, by at least 17 different women ranging from harassment to assault and rape. Court documents, interviews with eight accusers and more than 60 police reports from law enforcement agencies across the state document a pattern of domestic violence and a knack for manipulating both his ...

So-called “conversion therapy” that purports to convert gay people to become straight has lost favor in Europe and the U.S., where professional associations have spoken out against it and some states have banned it. With support from the Fund, Finbarr Toesland reported for The Progressive that American and European advocates of “conversion therapy” are now focused on Africa – where ...

Three suicides in eight months at an Idaho jail exposed a lack of accountability and oversight of the Canyon County Sheriff’s Office, according to a new report by Whitney Bryen, a reporter at InvestigateWest, with support from the Fund. For a story republished by Idaho’s largest newspaper and other outlets, Bryen analyzed video footage, jail policies and investigative files, documenting ...