In a series of stories for San Francisco Public Press, veteran reporter Seth Rosenfeld has exposed a culture of secrecy at the California Public Utilities Commission that has made it nearly impossible for the public to know if dangerous drivers for ride-sharing companies were being taken off the road. The commission has enormous powers, regulating power companies, water, telephone, transportation ...
Willamette Week reporter Nigel Jaquiss first learned in 2020 about Portland’s interest in undoing the damage done to a historically Black neighborhood after a highway had been built that had erased 1,000 homes and gutted the local business district. With support from the Fund, he was able two years later to report on the city’s efforts to spend $90 million ...
The industrial jobs that employed a generation of residents of Akron, Ohio, are mostly gone, but the health effects of the toxins they worked around every day live on. Some illnesses are only now surfacing, and, if the findings of epigenetics and toxic exposure studies are any indication, they could keep doing so for generations. With grants from the Fund, reporter Yanick Rice Lamb, who ...
With a grant from the Fund, veteran reporter Peter Byrne probed how taxpayer funds for conservation in Marin County, California, have supported the growth of agricultural businesses that degrade the lands, even inside a national park. The latest story in an ongoing the Pacific Sun-North Bay Bohemian investigative series details how commercial interests with local political clout have monopolized monies ...
Deadline Detroit reporter Violet Ikonomova investigated the oversight system used by the Detroit Police Department to evaluate officers accused of wrongdoing and uncovered a pattern that keeps bad police on the force. With a grant from the Fund, Ikonomova looked at cases of criminally charged officers who exhibited problems before their arrests to see how the department allowed them to ...
The Imprint, a publication of Fostering Media Connections, teamed up with local reporters across the country for a yearlong series on the hidden foster care system, which allows the removal of children from their homes, but places them with relatives or family friends who are not subject to court oversight and don’t often get support from the child welfare system. These ...
A battle over the use of dicamba, a weedkiller that critics says harms crops, has turned ugly in Arkansas, with large soybean farms forming a political action committee and going to court to sideline critics. With a grant from the Fund, Loretta Williams, assisted by reporter Trey Kay and producer Mitch Hanley, revisited the issue they first reported on in ...
In a 10-month investigation for the San Francisco Public Press, supported by the Fund, reporters Nina Sparling, Frank Bass and Madison Alvarado revealed unsafe living conditions at the city’s Plaza East Apartments, a public housing complex. The facility’s management company had asked for subsidies to demolish and redevelop the hundreds of homes, just 20 years after they were built. Prompted ...
In a three-part series with a grant from the Fund, Carolina Public Press found that in many North Carolina counties, social service agencies are being led by people who don’t meet minimum professional standards required by law. State agencies can’t prevent counties from hiring unqualified people and can’t reverse local hiring decisions. In at least one case, an unqualified agency ...
Honolulu Civil Beat, with support from the Fund, published a three-part investigative series showing significant problems in the development of Hawaii’s largest-ever infrastructure project, a multibillion-dollar elevated rail. Lead reporter Marcel Honore examined 400,000 pieces of information about real estate transactions and property-value increases and interviewed multiple sources over six months. The investigation found that the enormous potential for transit-oriented ...