With support from the Fund, Beth Shelburne conducted an extensive review of accounting data to track Alabama’s skyrocketing legal spending to defend its overcrowded prison system. Shelburne uncovered a record number of lawsuit settlement payments to victims of excessive force, wrongful death and medical neglect inside Alabama prisons. The first story in her reporting, published in the Alabama Reflector, details ...
For the last two years, a team from Feet in 2 Worlds (a nonprofit news organization that engages immigrant journalists) has conducted an in-depth investigation into misinformation and disinformation on Spanish radio in the U.S. With support from the Fund, the team, led by Paulina Velasco, examined the sources of misinformation, the lack of regulatory scrutiny that enables it, and ...
Journalist Ashli Blow has spent three years investigating Velsicol Chemical’s toxic legacy in Memphis for the Tennessee Lookout. The investigation began with a 2021 tip about Velsicol possibly stalling efforts to avoid Superfund designation, leading to years of reporting through public records requests, data analysis and interviews with residents, scientists and legal experts. Supported by the Fund, Blow’s latest story ...
Bangor Daily News reporter Sawyer Loftus has partnered with ProPublica’s Local Reporting Network since July to investigate evictions in Maine. For Loftus’ first story, which was supported by the Fund, he wrote about how a new eviction-prevention program in Maine excludes people in federal public housing despite the dire consequences they are likely to face if evicted. He focused on the ...
A state program to compensate people who were sterilized in California prisons has rejected most applications for compensation, according to an investigation by Cayla Mihalovich, with support from the Fund. For 18 months, Mihalovich has been investigating the flawed implementation of the reparations program. Her latest story, published in Cal Matters and KQED and republished in other outlets, includes the ...
California Gov. Gavin Newsom recently vetoed a bill intended to protect farmworkers when employers violate state outdoor heat-safety law, Robert J. Lopez reported with support from the Fund. The report was published in Capital & Main. It followed an investigation by Lopez, also supported by the Fund, that detailed how California sharply cut back on enforcement of outdoor heat-protection laws ...
For decades, police agencies in California have hidden evidence that officers engaged in misconduct and criminality – even paying the officers six-figure settlements to leave without a fight and then lying in reference checks when the officers apply for jobs in other places – according to an investigation by Katey Rusch and Casey Smith for UC Berkeley’s Investigative Reporting Program, ...
Rhode Island’s largest school district failed to tell students and parents that their private information was obtained by cyberhackers and posted online, according to an investigation by Mark Keierleber for the nonprofit education news site The74, with support from the Fund. Keierleber’s story was also published in the Boston Globe. He reported that a ransomware gang uploaded the private information ...
Seven years after the devastation of Hurricane Maria – and with continued blackouts caused by storms and spotty coverage – the government of Puerto Rico has not created a comprehensive plan to identify and notify people with special needs who could die without electricity to run dialysis machines and other equipment. With support from the Fund, the nonprofit Centro de ...
Chicago police officers who knowingly lie or conceal evidence in criminal cases are supposed to be put on a list that the State’s Attorney’s Office maintains, so that defendants can question their credibility if they’re called to the stand. But in an investigation for the Chicago Reader and the Invisible Institute, with support from the Fund, reporters Max Blaisdell and ...