Oakland Local – A continuing series of stories exposes the city’s Building Services division’s unfair treatment of property owners. The department is supposed to tackle blight and enforce housing codes, but in so doing, has caught fire for “imposing excessive fines, allowing inspectors to intimidate and threaten property owners.” It has also angered property owners for its “frequent use of prospective liens ...
Sarah Favot, Kirsten Berg and Jenna Ebersole for the New England Center for Investigative Reporting – The application of Massachusetts law passed to crack down on juvenile “super predators’’ has produced profound inequities. “One 16-year-old went looking for pot at a Brookline High School graduation party, then shot the guest of honor in the chest when he got a racial slur instead. ...
Colin Woodard – Portland, Maine – An investigative profile of Maine’s governor, written for The Portland Phoenix, explains how an improbable candidate and the Tea Party movement combined to win Paul LePage state-wide office. “[Paul] LePage’s actions in his first year in office suggest that his poverty-to-power experience has led him to see the world from the top down, and that ...
2011 Bob Butler and Jessica Williams report for The Lens – “Each day, after wrapping up work as a streetcar operator, Kisa Holmes drives by to check on the house she bought in the Upper 9thWard just weeks before Hurricane Katrina – a house that now sits empty, gutted and deteriorating because she can’t afford to fix it…. Before making the first ...
2011 Rob Gurwitt of the Connecticut Health I-Team – “Each time John Dempsey Hospital performs a cardiac valve surgery, the hospital receives a median payment of $82,589 from Medicare – about $23,000 more than the median paid to Danbury Hospital for the same surgical procedure. A pacemaker implant at Dempsey, part of the University of Connecticut, costs Medicare about $20,000—$2,200 more ...
2011 – As Hella Winston reports for The Jewish Week, “.. a Jewish religious tribunal [is] operating as a kind of shadow justice system, adjudicating sexual abuse cases without the involvement of law enforcement… It is a world where victims and perpetrators alike are subjected to threats of social ostracism and, in some cases, physical harm for non-compliance with the ‘system.’ ...
2011 Wanjohi Kabukuru – From Kenya, Kabukuru reports for NewAfrican Magazine: “Malaria kills more people in Africa than HIV-Aids. Therefore attempts to produce a vaccine against the disease should normally be received with joy. But no. The trial stages of a new vaccine, RTS,S have raised a storm in Africa.” The criticism centers on clinical trials of the vaccine that are conducted ...
2011 Guy Taylor – Reports in Salon.com how the federal government has been rubber stamping Big Pharma’s requests to increase production of the much-abused prescription drug, Oxycodone: “One of the most disturbing things about the prescription pain pill abuse epidemic is that it could have been avoided, or at least mitigated, if the DEA had fulfilled the responsibilities vested in it under federal ...
2011 – McNelly Torres reports for the Florida Center for Investigative Reporting: As part of the 2009 economic stimulus package, millions of federal dollars flowed to Florida’s public school districts. The money was intended to benefit low-performing schools as way of closing the so-called achievement gap. Starved for cash as a result of plummeting real estate values and dwindling property ...
2011 Kristin Palitza – At the height of the tobacco harvest season, Malawi’s lush, flowing fields are filled with young children picking the big green-yellow leaves. Some can count their age on one hand. Since the handling of the leaves is done largely without protective clothing, workers absorb up to 54 milligrams of dissolved nicotine daily through their skin, equal to ...