I’ve spent the past few years stewarding collaborative projects between the Center for Public Integrity and local newsrooms. These partnerships have expanded the depth of our reporting and strengthened our ability to reach audiences — and, we hope, offered equal value to our partners. 

But that’s not a simple matter, or a safe assumption if you don’t put in the work.

As our mission shifted to focus on investigating inequality, we made a pointed effort to diversify our collaborative network. I’ve spent a considerable amount of time grappling with the question of how we, a national investigative newsroom, can ensure equitable partnerships with local newsrooms serving communities of color. I believe that the newsrooms we work with should benefit mutually from the collaboration, whether by enhancing reporting capacity, growing their audience or expanding their budget. 

To figure this out collaboratively, we convened journalists from Baltimore Beat, The Kansas City Defender and Centro de Periodismo Investigativo to explore how to incorporate equity into written partnership agreements. In the second year of our efforts, supported with a grant from the Walton Family Foundation, we discussed the distinct challenges confronted by these newsrooms when collaborating with national outlets. 

The clear pathway the group identified: Before finalizing an official agreement, partners must build the relationship and be transparent with each other. The memorandum of agreement that comes out of that process should have a clear purpose to create a structure for equity between publishers with unequal access to resources. 

Those inequities might include a local partner in an early entrepreneurship stage, with less staff and capital. The local partner may not have the same relationships with national and regional funders — may find, in fact, that funders aren’t giving them an audience or any benefit of the doubt.

As national funders commit more than $500 million into future funding of local journalism through the Press Forward initiative and other efforts, we hope that more thoughtful partnerships help ensure small news organizations serving communities of color have a seat at the table and are treated equitably.

The conversations and brainstorming sessions we held with our partners helped us understand the most immediate and specific needs at the local level and how we can all work together to achieve specific goals.

Here’s what we heard from our local partners about laying the foundation for an equitable partnership: 

• Understand each partner’s contributions: In every collaboration, each participant has something valuable to teach the group. Don’t make assumptions about what a partner can or can’t contribute. For instance: While we may lead certain projects, my newsroom regards all participants as equals. We try hard to avoid a paternalistic approach. 
• Set expectations: It is crucial to the success of a partnership to have clear goals and expectations and to address areas where collaborators’ needs may not align. Determine early on who is responsible for what. 
• Establish mechanisms for mutual accountability: What happens when the partnership isn’t going as planned? Set clear parameters on how each collaborator will resolve conflict and when to call it quits. 
• Gather feedback: Throughout a collaboration, plan times to gather feedback about what’s going well, what needs to change, what has been accomplished and what’s to come. 

Are you really getting to know your partner?

Our partners shared some negative experiences with larger national outlets seeking access to their audiences, assuming their credibility in communities of color is all they have to offer. That’s untrue and offensive. 

During our time together, we all participated in an asset-mapping activity, illustrating one small but impactful approach to tackling this challenge: What do we each bring to the table in a partnership, and what are we seeking from it? All newsrooms should be able to map that out before joining a collaboration. And they should also take the time to learn about the assets their partners have. This is a good starting place, hopefully leaving no room for assumptions. 

At our collaboration summit in September in Washington, D.C., Carla Minet, the executive director of Centro de Periodismo Investigativo, shared the importance of ensuring partners are clear about each other’s internal culture. Clarity around processes like deadlines and editing are important, she said. The ideal collaboration includes equal control of project timelines, which allows journalists to be more thorough and thoughtful, Minet said.

Centro de Periodismo Investigativo is a nonprofit investigative newsroom that’s the only news organization of its kind in Puerto Rico and the Caribbean. It’s received dozens of journalism awards since its founding in 2007.

The Kansas City Defender, launched in 2021, was founded as a response to the Black Lives Matter movement. Staffers put Black liberation at the core of their work. They have a strong Black youth readership, and their work is produced by young journalists, some who proudly consider themselves activists. KC Defender maintains these values in all work and partnerships, even though they believe that most large mainstream media outlets may not be ready to collaborate with a publication that explicitly supports and advocates for a cause. 

That’s another lesson we drew from our conversations together: Mission alignment is a high priority in partnerships. It’s important to spend some time in the early stages to go over values. What is your newsroom unwilling to compromise on? What does your potential partner hold onto firmly as a part of their editorial identity? 

The Baltimore Beat operates with a small staff of just three full-time people, yet extends its impact beyond traditional journalism. By prioritizing community engagement events and connecting with overlooked youth through hiring young Black Baltimore natives, the publication fills a void left by larger outlets like The Baltimore Banner and The Baltimore Sun. 

Lisa Snowden, its editor-in-chief and co-founder, manages the day-to-day operations. During our time together, she said there’s little time for planning or participating in collaborative projects with national outlets. If organizations want to create inclusive and accessible collaborative projects or networks, we must address that challenge: So many local outlets have limited staff capacity. 

Public Integrity’s audience team has led the effort to bring more newsrooms and reporters into our investigations. With the support of editors and reporters, we create reporting toolkits as a way to remove barriers to partnerships. These guides give access to detailed data breakdowns, a summary of our findings, public records resources and ideas for reporting angles to dig locally into the issue. To further support reporters, we host open office hours for collaborative brainstorming and problem solving. We continue to refine this model to ensure that publications with differing capacities and skill sets can participate. 

Snowden’s insights on the limitations of a small staff prompted the idea of enhancing transparency around project investment in our toolkits. My new goal is to specify the time, staffing and financial commitments required to do a particular project, or how that can vary depending on the approach a newsroom takes. 

But the bottom line is that without proper funding, vital local outlets struggle to employ staff, hindering their participation in collaborative investigative projects despite serving a critical community need.

As a Baltimore City native, I was extremely pleased to see the Pivot Fund’s $150,000 investment into Baltimore Beat.  

It’s no secret that media outlets serving and led by communities of color have long faced financial challenges. A 2023 study by Meredith D. Clark and Tracie M. Powell emphasized that the present day is no exception. We must bridge this resource gap. Our partners expressed difficulty feeling like equal collaborators when faced with a newsroom possessing greater financial power. These outlets are open to working with investigative newsrooms, but not without proper funding. Training alone cannot ensure sustainability and growth. 

That’s why I believe it’s the responsibility of well-resourced newsrooms to advocate for equity in funding.

The post What publishers of color taught me about building equitable collaborations appeared first on Center for Public Integrity.

This post was originally published on Center for Public Integrity.

Lisa Yanick Litwiller, a former Center for Public Integrity director of audience whose humor, compassion, leadership and talent contributed to award-winning projects that focused on inequality, died of cancer Monday surrounded by her family at home in Mt. Pleasant, Michigan. 

She was 46. 

Yanick Litwiller came to Public Integrity in 2021, building an audience team that was central to the organization’s mission to report stories that confront inequality. She built an innovative partnership model that paired Public Integrity journalists with reporters from newsrooms around the country, resulting in important, impactful stories on topics from student homelessness to climate relocation.

Her former colleagues remember her as a supportive leader who led by example and cultivated a space for everyone to speak up, be heard and laugh.

“In an industry that is so often stressful, she spread joy. She helped people see what was possible and how to do better,” said Jamie Smith Hopkins, a Public Integrity editor. 

Mc Nelly Torres, an editor at Public Integrity, said Yanick Litwiller’s superpower was to make people in the newsroom feel valued, respected and cared for as she pushed them to reach their full potential.

Torres remembers how Yanick Litwiller helped her to take a step back and strategize about how to reach local audiences in innovative ways. “Her command and style on building collaborations, setting Public Integrity’s talented newsroom at the center, was a great lesson to all of us,” Torres said. 

Several of those collaborations — Harm’s Way and Toxic Labor — were organized with Columbia Journalism Investigations, Columbia Journalism School’s postgraduate reporting program. Kristen Lombardi, Columbia Journalism Investigations’ director and editor, said it was an honor and privilege to work with Yanick Litwiller on collaborative investigations. 

“She cared so deeply about local news and its crucial role in lifting up marginalized and forgotten voices and watchdogging those in power,” Lombardi said. “All of us at CJI who worked closely with Lisa were inspired by her unflagging commitment to those ideals.”

Public Integrity’s audience engagement editor, Ashley Clarke, said Yanick Litwiller never missed an opportunity to uplift and praise her team. “She could so easily spot people’s strengths and potential even before they could,” Clarke said. “Her favorite question to ask was, ‘What’s your superpower?’”

Matt DeRienzo, who was editor in chief at Public Integrity during Yanick Litwiller’s tenure, also remembers her as a leader who lifted people up and made space for everyone’s ideas to be heard.

She believed “that every person in the room has unique skills, talent, perspective, knowledge or energy that can improve the work,” DeRienzo said. “She constantly advocated for expanding who was in the room. No idea was too big or ambitious enough if you embrace collaboration.” 

Yanick Litwiller’s work at Public Integrity brought recognition from the industry. One honor she was particularly happy about: Public Integrity was a finalist for the Online News Association’s General Excellence Award in 2023, an award recognizing the best audience engagement work in the country. 

Yanick Litwiller left Public Integrity in January to assume a new role as executive editor of innovation and daily news at Bridge Michigan.

Earlier, Yanick Litwiller worked for Hearst Newspapers where she spearheaded an investigation into sexual abuse of the Boys & Girls Clubs that resulted in safety policy changes and garnered several national awards, including the prestigious Investigative Reporters and Editors award.

IRE judges said of “At risk: Sexual abuse and Boys & Girls Clubs”: “Despite the national spotlight on child sexual abuse within trusted organizations, this investigation revealed a continuing lack of transparency and accountability at the Boys & Girls Clubs of America and its affiliates. This team of reporters identified more than 100 cases of abuse involving 280 victims in 31 states. A powerful and high-impact investigation prompted by one reporter asking: How often does this happen?”

“Lisa understood the power of storytelling and of hearing directly from the vulnerable people, even if it makes for difficult listening,” said Amy Silverman, who worked with Public Integrity in 2022 on a story about housing for people with intellectual disabilities. “It was a dream come true to collaborate with such a smart, insightful, devoted individual.”

Alexia Fernández Campbell, a Public Integrity senior reporter covering labor and inequality, said Lisa deeply believed in Public Integrity’s journalism and in the power of investigative journalism to make lasting change.

“She had faith in us even when we didn’t have faith in ourselves,” Fernández Campbell said. “I am so grateful that I had the chance to work with Lisa — to know her. The world is a better place because she was here.”

The post Former Public Integrity newsroom leader lifted up ‘forgotten voices’ appeared first on Center for Public Integrity.

This post was originally published on Center for Public Integrity.

A Center for Public Integrity investigation into states’ harsh and often counterproductive collections tactics for unpaid income tax has won the January Sidney Award.

The prize is awarded by the Sidney Hillman Foundation to an “outstanding piece of journalism that appeared in the prior month.”

Among the findings: at least nine states can suspend or decline to renew driver’s licenses because of tax debt — Louisiana did so more than 19,000 times last year alone — and at least 16 states and Washington, D.C., can suspend or decline to renew professional licenses for the same reason. Those Catch-22 penalties undercut residents’ ability to pay up.

The Internal Revenue Service, meanwhile, offers far more assistance for taxpayers in financial hardship than most states, Public Integrity discovered.

Reporters Maya Srikrishnan and Ashley Clarke worked on the piece for more than a year, doggedly finding new avenues to tell the story when states blocked data requests by stalling or quoting outrageously high fees. With help from data reporter Joe Yerardi and editor Jamie Smith Hopkins, they interviewed low-income taxpayer clinic attorneys around the country and surveyed every state with an income tax to understand their collections policies and assistance in hardship cases.

“When we learned about people being stripped of their livelihood by states because of tax debt, it was really important for us to understand how widespread the issue is,” Srikrishnan and Clarke said in a statement. “It surprised us to learn that many of the states that are taking such drastic measures like suspending driver’s and professional licenses aren’t tracking the impact. It may be easy to assume that if someone isn’t paying their taxes, they are intentionally and willfully violating the law, but that wasn’t the case for the people we spoke with. Many of them are caught in the cycle of poverty.”

Last year’s Sidney Award winners included Grist, The New York Times and The Washington Post.

“Srikrishnan and Clarke showed perseverance and ingenuity in their reporting,” Sidney judge Lindsay Beyerstein said in the January award announcement. “Their ongoing coverage of dysfunctional state taxation has shed light on an important driver of economic inequality.”

Public Integrity’s journalists have been recognized with numerous other honors in recent months, including the Paul Tobenkin Award, a Peabody Award nomination, a National Headliner Award, an Excellence in Financial Journalism award, a National Association of Black Journalists Salute to Excellence Award, the Sigma Award recognizing the world’s best data journalism, two finalist honors for the Shaufler Prize for reporting about underserved people, the Society for Advancing Business Editing and Writing’s “Best in Business” awards, the Gracie Awards honoring media produced by and for women, the D.C. chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists’ Dateline Awards, and the Signal Awards recognizing the country’s best podcasts.

The newsroom also won a national 2023 Edward R. Murrow Award for Overall Excellence for its portfolio of investigative reporting about inequality in the United States and a separate Murrow Award for Best Feature Reporting.

Founded in 1989, the Pulitzer Prize-winning Center for Public Integrity is one of the oldest nonprofit news organizations in the country and is dedicated to investigating systems and circumstances that contribute to inequality in the United States. 

The post Public Integrity wins January Sidney Award for debt collection investigation appeared first on Center for Public Integrity.

This post was originally published on Center for Public Integrity.

Katherine Hapgood has joined the staff of the Center for Public Integrity as this year’s Charles Lewis American University fellow. She’ll be focusing in part on the nonprofit investigative news organization’s work on access to democracy issues ahead of the 2024 election.

Originally from Des Moines, Iowa, Hapgood recently graduated with a degree in journalism and chemistry from Boston University, where she wrote for outlets including the Boston Globe, MetroWest Daily News and Civil Service World (UK). 

She is currently pursuing a master’s degree in journalism and public affairs with a concentration in investigative journalism at American, which partners with Public Integrity each year on a paid fellowship that’s part-time during the school year and full-time for the remainder of the year.

“I am ecstatic to work with the equity-focused team at CPI and I look forward to learning from all of the accomplished and inspiring people within the organization,” Hapgood said.

Last year, Public Integrity and American renamed the fellowship in honor of Public Integrity founder Charles Lewis, who also founded and recently retired from leading the Investigative Reporting Workshop at American. 

Hapgood is primarily interested in government, political and investigative journalism targeted at holding systems, corporations and people in power accountable, and writing stories to empower the public.

Over the past year, 2022-2023 Charles Lewis American University fellow Ileana Garnand published an investigation into the flood of state laws targeting trans youth and contributed to major collaborative investigations including “Who Counts?,” which won a National Headliner Award.

Public Integrity’s journalists have been recognized with numerous other honors in recent months, including a national Edward R. Murrow Award for Overall Excellence, the Stewart B. McKinney Award, the Paul Tobenkin Award, a Peabody Award nomination, an Excellence in Financial Journalism award, a National Association of Black Journalists Salute to Excellence Award, the Sigma Award recognizing the world’s best data journalism, two finalist honors for the Shaufler Prize for reporting about underserved people, the Society for Advancing Business Editing and Writing’s “Best in Business” awards, the Gracie Awards honoring media produced by and for women, the D.C. chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists’ Dateline Awards, and the Signal Awards recognizing the country’s best podcasts.

Founded in 1989, the Pulitzer Prize-winning Center for Public Integrity is one of the oldest nonprofit news organizations in the country and is dedicated to investigating systems and circumstances that contribute to inequality in the United States.

The post Katherine Hapgood joins Public Integrity as Charles Lewis fellow appeared first on Center for Public Integrity.

This post was originally published on Center for Public Integrity.

Reading Time: 3 minutes

Zhaozhou (Jovi) Dai has joined the Center for Public Integrity as a data journalist supporting the investigative nonprofit newsroom’s partnership with the Central Valley Journalism Collaborative in California.

Dai has worked as a data reporter at Storybench, a chatbot developer at the Boston Globe for The Emancipator, a reporter for The Global Observer and a data research assistant at Northeastern University’s Co-Lab for Data Impact.

“Joining the Center for Public Integrity, working in partnership with the Central Valley Journalism Collaborative, as a data reporter is an exciting opportunity for me to merge my passion for storytelling with the power of data,” said Dai, who will be based in Merced, California. “I am committed to leveraging data analysis and visualization techniques to uncover meaningful insights that will enrich our reporting, drive informed narratives, and provide knowledge to our communities. I look forward to collaborating with my experienced colleagues to craft impactful, data-driven stories that shed light on important issues.”

Dai holds a master’s degree from Northeastern and a bachelor’s degree in journalism from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

His data-driven reporting project, “Software Tools to Support Climate Reporting: Addressing Gaps and Needs among Journalists,” was recently accepted for presentation at the 2023 Joint Computation + Journalism European Data & Computational Journalism Conference in Zürich, Switzerland.

“Jovi’s deep data analysis and visualization skills will bolster and amplify our collaborative investigative journalism in the Central Valley and beyond,” said Lisa Yanick Litwiller, Public Integrity’s director of audience.

With support from the James B. McClatchy Foundation, for the next year Dai will work as a data journalist supporting the work of the Central Valley Journalism Collaborative, a group of local news organizations working together to report on undercovered stories in California’s Central Valley. This is part of a Public Integrity initiative to strengthen local investigative reporting across the country, through partnerships with local newsrooms designed to systematically exchange knowledge and provide ongoing support.

“The Central Valley Journalism Collaborative deeply appreciates the work of CPI to bring such a skilled data journalist to our team,” said Michelle Morgante, the collaborative’s editor. “As nonprofit newsrooms like ours work to build up coverage for our region, having someone like Jovi will enable us to tell richer, better-reported stories that will help inform communities throughout central California. It’s all part of our mission to bring to the surface the information people need to understand the events and issues shaping our lives.”

Public Integrity’s journalists have been recognized with numerous honors in recent months, including the Paul Tobenkin Award, a Peabody Award nomination, a National Headliner Award, an Excellence in Financial Journalism award, a National Association of Black Journalists Salute to Excellence Award, the Sigma Award recognizing the world’s best data journalism, two finalist honors for the Shaufler Prize for reporting about underserved people, the Society for Advancing Business Editing and Writing’s “Best in Business” awards, the Gracie Awards honoring media produced by and for women, the D.C. chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists’ Dateline Awards, and the Signal Awards recognizing the country’s best podcasts.

Founded in 1989, the Pulitzer Prize-winning Center for Public Integrity is one of the oldest nonprofit news organizations in the country and is dedicated to investigating systems and circumstances that contribute to inequality in the United States.

The post Jovi Dai joins Public Integrity as local data journalist appeared first on Center for Public Integrity.

The Center for Public Integrity has won the Institute for Nonprofit News’ Breaking Barriers Award, and Audience Engagement Editor Ashley Clarke has been named Nonprofit Newcomer of the Year.

At an awards ceremony in Philadelphia Wednesday, Clarke was honored for helping transform the mission, workplace culture and partnerships of one of the country’s oldest nonprofit news organizations.

“Unhoused and Undercounted,” a Public Integrity investigation by data journalist Amy DiPierro and senior reporter Corey Mitchell, in partnership with The Seattle Times, Street Sense Media and WAMU/DCist, was recognized with the Breaking Barriers Award. The series, for which Clarke coordinated audience engagement, showed that local school districts across the country were failing to identify and serve hundreds of thousands of homeless students.

The Breaking Barriers Award honors journalism that brings “new understanding to an issue or topic affecting people or communities that are historically underrepresented, disadvantaged or marginalized, resulting in impactful change.”

Two other Public Integrity investigations, “Unequal Burden” and “Who Counts?,” were finalists in the INN Nonprofit News Awards’ best explanatory reporting category.

Clarke, 25, joined Public Integrity in 2021 after working at NBC4 Washington as a production assistant and weekend assignment editor. She earned her undergraduate degree at the University of Maryland, where she studied multiplatform journalism and Arabic.

She helped define and enforce a newsroom-wide principle of reporting “with and in service to” the people and communities closest to the problems and solutions Public Integrity tackles. And she helped build an innovative local journalism collaboration model that was featured in a keynote address at the 2023 Collaborative Journalism Summit in June. 

“Ashley joined Public Integrity as we were defining a new mission that focused all of our investigative journalism tradition on confronting inequality in the U.S., and she saw right away that it would require a different approach to our journalism and how we treat our colleagues, sources and partners,” said Public Integrity Editor in Chief Matt DeRienzo. “I think she immediately recognized the potential of the nonprofit journalism model to upend deeply unequal power structures around who has access to information and how people’s stories are told. But also that nonprofit news can reinforce and protect those systems if not bluntly challenged.” 

“I’m incredibly honored to be recognized in this way,” Clarke said. “A few short years ago, I could not have imagined that I would be sitting alongside such talented journalists let alone be celebrated for my work.” 

In addition to her role in engagement and partnership work in the newsroom, Clarke is a steward in the Public Integrity union and is co-chair of a staff-led Public Integrity Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Committee. Her reporting has prompted reform of a Washington, D.C., housing program and contributed to a project that exposed how state tax policies are placing a disproportionate burden on lower-income people. That work has been honored with multiple awards this year. And in February, Clarke was named to Editor & Publisher magazine’s 25 under 35 list of young leaders having an impact on the journalism industry.

Last week, Public Integrity won a national 2023 Edward R. Murrow Award for Overall Excellence for its portfolio of investigative reporting about inequality in the United States, as well as an Edward R. Murrow Award for Best Feature Reporting.

Public Integrity’s journalists have been recognized with numerous other honors in recent months, including the Paul Tobenkin Award, a Peabody Award nomination, a National Headliner Award, an Excellence in Financial Journalism award, a National Association of Black Journalists Salute to Excellence Award, the Sigma Award recognizing the world’s best data journalism, two finalist honors for the Shaufler Prize for reporting about underserved people, the Society for Advancing Business Editing and Writing’s “Best in Business” awards, the Gracie Awards honoring media produced by and for women, the D.C. chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists’ Dateline Awards, and the Signal Awards recognizing the country’s best podcasts.

Founded in 1989, the Pulitzer Prize-winning Center for Public Integrity is one of the oldest nonprofit news organizations in the country and is dedicated to investigating systems and circumstances that contribute to inequality in the United States.

The post Public Integrity journalists win Nonprofit Newcomer, Breaking Barriers awards appeared first on Center for Public Integrity.

This post was originally published on Center for Public Integrity.

Reading Time: 2 minutes

Season 2 of the Center for Public Integrity’s podcast, “The Heist,” has won a 2023 Salute to Excellence Award from the National Association of Black Journalists.

“The Wealth Vortex,” which confronted America’s racial wealth gap through the story of an Iowa woman attempting to open the country’s first Black-owned bank in decades, was recognized by NABJ for best interactive feature.

In addition to a five-episode podcast, the project included long-form text reporting, photography, drone video, resources for readers and listeners, a limited-run newsletter to share behind-the-scenes details, and an interactive text-messaging service pointing to more about the story. 

The podcast, produced in partnership with Transmitter Media (now Pushkin), was nominated for a Peabody award earlier this year in addition to numerous other journalism and podcast industry honors.

Season 3 of The Heist — “Land of Broken Promises” — will be out in October. Land of Broken Promises will explore the federal government’s role in harming generations of Black farmers.

“I’m grateful to this newsroom for giving reporters time and support to dig deeply into entrenched problems that fuel inequality, and grateful to the people who share their experiences with us,” said Jamie Smith Hopkins, a Public Integrity editor and senior reporter who hosted season 2. “We’re honored to receive this recognition from the National Association of Black Journalists.” 

In addition to winning a 2023 NABJ Salute to Excellence Award for best interactive feature, Public Integrity was a finalist for best news story for an investigation by Ashley Clarke and Amy DiPierro into a Washington, D.C., housing program. The story was published in partnership with the Washington Informer newspaper.

In addition to its Peabody nomination, Season 2 of “The Heist” has also been recognized this year with an Excellence in Financial Journalism award for best audio reporting; an award from the Shaufler Prize; a Signal Award silver medal; a “Best in Business” award; and finalist honors from the Ambie Awards, Dateline Awards, WAN-IFRA North American Digital Media Awards, Online Journalism Awards and the INN Nonprofit News Awards.

Public Integrity’s investigative reporting about inequality in the United States was recently awarded a national 2023 Edward R. Murrow Award for Overall Excellence. Other Public Integrity work this year has been honored with the Paul Tobenkin Award, a National Headliner Award, Mental Health America’s 2023 Media Award, Dateline Awards, the Gracie Awards and the shortlist for the Sigma Award recognizing the world’s best data journalism. 

Founded in 1989, the Center for Public Integrity is one of the oldest nonprofit news organizations in the country and is dedicated to investigating systems and circumstances that contribute to inequality in the United States.

The post Public Integrity podcast honored with NABJ award appeared first on Center for Public Integrity.

Reading Time: 3 minutes

The Center for Public Integrity has won a 2023 national Edward R. Murrow Award for Overall Excellence.

It recognizes a body of work by the nonprofit investigative newsroom that confronts widening inequality in the U.S. through reporting that’s rooted in innovative data analysis, powerful storytelling, historical context and collaboration with local journalists and sources closest to the problems and solutions in question.

Presented by the Radio Television Digital News Association, the Edward R. Murrow Awards recognize outstanding achievements in broadcast and digital journalism. 

Public Integrity was also recognized with a 2023 Edward R. Murrow Award for Feature Reporting for senior reporter Yvette Cabrera’s examination of a Navajo man’s quest to heal his land, his people and himself from sickness caused by uranium mining, part of the federal government’s quest to build a nuclear arsenal.

“An overall excellence award is such wonderful recognition of the clarity and commitment Public Integrity colleagues have about the organization’s mission of confronting inequality through investigative reporting, and to the work of hundreds of local journalists who have collaborated and partnered with us in this work,” said Public Integrity Editor in Chief Matt DeRienzo. “Every single person at our small-but-mighty nonprofit, both newsroom and business-side staff, had a hand in making this work happen and the impact on people’s lives that has resulted.”

The portfolio of work recognized for Overall Excellence included:

• “Unhoused and Undercounted,” an investigation in partnership with The Seattle Times, Street Sense Media and WAMU/DCist that exposed school districts’ failure to identify and serve homeless students across the country. It was followed by calls in Congress for accountability by federal agencies and an increase in federal funding for local schools to address the problem.
• “The Wealth Vortex” and Season 2 of “The Heist” podcast, which showed how government policies from Reconstruction to the present day have compounded to give the country a wider Black and white wealth gap than existed when civil rights laws were passed in the 1960s. 
• “Unequal Burden,” an investigative series in partnership with ICT showing how state tax policy and federal tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans have helped maintain and expand the wealth gap.
• “Who Counts?,” which found that 26 states made access to voting and political representation less equal in the past two years as the “Big Lie” about the 2020 election and a new super-majority on the U.S. Supreme Court opened the door to attacks on democracy unprecedented in modern times. 
• “Harm’s Way,” in partnership with Columbia Journalism Investigations and Type Investigations, which revealed the federal government’s failure to help communities forced to relocate due to the impacts of climate change.
• “Attacked Behind the Wheel,” in partnership with Newsy, which exposed the reality just below the surface of a Biden administration push for more women to become truck drivers as supply chain issues gripped the country: a pattern of sexual assault and labor abuses faced by women who have joined truck driver apprentice programs.
• And “Institution of One,” which investigated the lack of safe appropriate housing for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities.

Public Integrity’s journalists have been recognized with numerous honors in recent months, including the Paul Tobenkin Award, a Peabody Award nomination, a National Headliner Award, an Excellence in Financial Journalism award, the Sigma Award recognizing the world’s best data journalism, two finalist honors for the Shaufler Prize for reporting about underserved people, the Society for Advancing Business Editing and Writing’s “Best in Business” awards, the Gracie Awards honoring media produced by and for women, the D.C. chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists’ Dateline Awards, and the Signal Awards recognizing the country’s best podcasts. 

Founded in 1989, the Center for Public Integrity is one of the oldest nonprofit news organizations in the country and is dedicated to investigating systems and circumstances that contribute to inequality in the United States.

The post Public Integrity wins Edward R. Murrow Award for Overall Excellence appeared first on Center for Public Integrity.

The Center for Public Integrity is a finalist for the Online Journalism Awards’ coveted general excellence award.

The nonprofit investigative news organization is one of three finalists in the small newsroom category, alongside Honolulu Civil Beat and The Markup. Finalists in the award’s larger categories include The New York Times and The Washington Post.

Public Integrity investigates inequality. In the case it made to ONA for the award, the newsroom noted that exposing and explaining inequality “requires an approach to investigative reporting that engages the people closest to it.”

“Rather than the traditional investigative reporting notion of catching a bad guy breaking the rules, it demands an examination of the rules themselves: Systems of government and society that are working exactly as designed, but by design create or widen inequality,” Public Integrity Editor-in-Chief Matt DeRienzo wrote in the newsroom’s entry.

Public Integrity investigations in the past year have dug into voting inequities in every state, tax policies that increase economic inequality, assaults on women truckers because of insufficient safeguards in training programs, homeless students falling through the cracks of a law intended to help them and the lack of safe appropriate housing for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities, among other stories.

“I’m so proud of the work that Public Integrity’s staff has done in the past year and continues to do to reveal inequality across a wide span of topics,” said Senior Editor Jennifer LaFleur.  “Their work reflects deep research, unique data analysis and rare efforts to make stories accessible to everyone.”

At last year’s Online Journalism Awards, Public Integrity won the pandemic reporting category, for a project about the COVID housing crisis reported with The Associated Press, and was a finalist in two other categories.

The awards are organized by the Online News Association, the world’s largest digital journalism association. The organization will name winners later this month and honor them at a ceremony in Philadelphia Aug. 26.

Other Public Integrity work this year has been honored with the Paul Tobenkin Award, a National Headliner Award, the Sigma Award recognizing the world’s best data journalism, Mental Health America’s 2023 Media Award, Dateline Awards, the Gracie Awards and nominations for Peabody and Ambie awards. 

Founded in 1989, the Center for Public Integrity is one of the oldest nonprofit news organizations in the country and is dedicated to investigating systems and circumstances that contribute to inequality in the United States.

The post Public Integrity nominated for ‘general excellence’ Online Journalism Award appeared first on Center for Public Integrity.

This post was originally published on Center for Public Integrity.

The Center for Public Integrity is setting out to strengthen local investigative reporting across the country, through partnerships with local newsrooms designed to systematically exchange knowledge and provide ongoing support.

The initiative will prioritize news organizations serving communities that are traditionally under-resourced yet have the potential to produce groundbreaking stories exposing systemic inequalities affecting their audiences. It challenges the collapse of investigative journalism on the local level, where the financial woes of newspapers have left municipal officials and other power players largely unsupervised, leading to an increase in corruption, inefficiency, and abuse of power.

This initiative is funded by an initial $600,000 in grants from James B. McClatchy Foundation, Wichita Foundation, Knight Foundation, Reva and David Logan Foundation, and others. It involves hiring data journalists, training journalists in investigative techniques, developing equitable partnerships, and providing free access to more than 1.8 billion public records. 

Public Integrity’s goal is to be a learning partner for local investigative journalists who play a vital role in their communities, starting with a few partnerships then expanding nationwide.

“We’ve designed Public Integrity Local to intentionally transfer knowledge and provide ongoing support,” said Paul Cheung, Public Integrity CEO. “It’s a way to build local investigative capacity deliberately and cost-effectively, especially in places that never had it.”

Journalism’s watchdog role

The watchdog role of investigative journalists is crucial on the local level, where it can expose government corruption and other abuses of power, and provide accountability. Research has shown that when local newspapers close, local government hiring and spending expands, and the cost of financing goes up. What’s more, a local news vacuum leaves communities vulnerable to mis/disinformation, increased polarization, and a drop in civic engagement. 

A new approach

Up to now, most investigative journalists have learned the craft largely by osmosis, working with more experienced colleagues in newsrooms large enough to have investigative teams. But newspapers have been closing at an average rate of two per week since 2004, and many of those still open have shed their investigative teams. Community media outlets, for their part, have community trust but rarely the resources for investigation.

Public Integrity will be intentional about knowledge transfer. The initiative will provide continuous coaching, consultation, and access to Public Integrity’s resources to help partners improve their data and technical skills, develop data-rich local enterprise stories, and navigate the FOIA process. Public Integrity will also co-fundraise funds with partners to ensure sustainability of local investigative journalism. With additional funding, the initiative aims to offer mentorship for emerging investigative journalists. 

“Empowering local journalism is paramount in fortifying democracy. Public Integrity has devised an intentional and cost-effective approach to bolster local investigative reporting, ensuring that our investment yields the maximum impact possible,” said Courtney Bengtson, Chief Strategy Officer at The Wichita Foundation.

Strong Partnerships

In its initial stage, the local investigative initiative will support local news organizations by:

• Making more than 1.8 billion public records more accessible to local journalists with The Accountability Project.
• Hiring, coaching, and managing a data journalist for the Central Valley Journalism Collaborative based in Merced, Calif.
• Building collective and individual capacity for investigative and data journalism with the Wichita Journalism Collaborative members.
• Developing equitable national-local partnership models with BIPOC publishers.

These strategies are supported by visionary funders such as James B. McClatchy Foundation, Knight Foundation, Reva and David Logan Foundation, Wichita Foundation and others who recognize journalism is essential to build informed and engaged communities, especially on the local level, so we can have a viable, participatory democracy. 

Collaboration is in our DNA

Public Integrity, one of the nation’s oldest nonprofit newsrooms, is built on collaboration. Its founder, Charles Lewis, would routinely give away the results of investigations so other news outlets could run with them. It has worked extensively with numerous national and local newsrooms over the years. For example, Public Integrity recently helped Fresnoland’s executive director and policy editor, Danielle Bergstrom, map out a story exposing a failure by regulators to consider pollution impacts from a planned highway expansion. 

“The story is making waves, EPA is already revisiting their position on the project and a lawsuit is getting filed by resident groups over the project,” Bergstrom said. “The Center for Public Integrity has provided essential investigative editing support when we needed it, sharpening a story to have an immediate impact on policymakers in our community.”

We asked local newsrooms what they need

The initiative was carefully designed. Over the past 18 months, Public Integrity has asked local news organizations around the country what obstacles they’ve faced in launching investigations, and what issues they’ve had in partnering with national organizations. They identified three major elements as lacking, and it shaped the initiative:

1. Technology and data expertise: Groundbreaking investigations require technology and data expertise. Many local news organizations, particularly smaller nonprofits, lack the budget to afford a full-time data team, or the expertise to manage freelance data journalists.
2. Apprenticeship: Unlike some professions, journalists are not required to have a journalism degree to practice. Many great journalists learn their craft through years of collaboration with veteran journalists  in their newsroom. With the continuous staffing cuts, institutional knowledge is often not transferred from one generation to another.
3. Equitable partnership between national & local news organizations: Local newsrooms don’t have equal leverage when partnering with national news organizations. Too often, national media parachute into local communities to extract their insights and relationships for their stories without proper credit, clear collaboration agreements, or shared financial resources.

This is just the beginning of the journey, and The Center for Public Integrity looks forward to partnering with more diverse local news organizations, communities, and funders to build a better, more equitable future. Public Integrity Local is committed to improving the capacity of local news organizations to hold the powerful accountable, promote transparency, and foster informed civic engagement. 

If you want to learn more about our initiative, please contact Paul Cheung at paul.cheung@publicintegrity.org

The post Public Integrity launches effort to support local investigative reporting appeared first on Center for Public Integrity.

This post was originally published on Center for Public Integrity.

Center for Public Integrity Chief of Staff and Operations Jin Ding was named 2023 Member of the Year by the Asian American Journalists Association (AAJA) at the organization’s annual convention on Saturday.

Ding’s contributions to AAJA and support of fellow journalists have had a far-reaching impact.

Ding first joined AAJA in 2017 while working at the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting. A year later, they collaborated with Shirley Qiu, currently the news analytics & insights editor at The Washington Post, to establish AAJA’s “Women and Non-Binary Voices” affinity group, aiming to create a supportive and secure environment for women and nonbinary journalists. From 2020 to 2023, Ding co-chaired the organization’s convention programming committee, overseeing the organization of two virtual conventions and the in-person conventions held in Los Angeles and Washington, D.C., the past two years.

“Jin’s role as VP of Finance for AAJA is just the tip of the iceberg,” said Paul Cheung, CEO of Public Integrity and former president of AAJA from 2013 to 2016. “Beyond her official title, Jin actively engages in convention programming to benefit our members, provides essential online security training for our leadership program fellows in Asia, and takes the lead in organizing gatherings for AAPI non-profit journalists and funders, aiming to advance equity in journalism for AAPIs.”

Ding was elected to AAJA’s national board of directors as the vice president of finance in 2021. In this position, they played a crucial role in introducing essential programs for AAJA, including a mental wellness program, a fiscal sponsor program, and the AAPI nonprofit executives’ roundtable.

“What I can provide for AAJA could never match what the organization has given me. Leaders from AAJA have taught me endurance, resilience, kindness, innovation and so much more. AAJA is my chosen family, which has consistently shown up for me throughout my career,” Ding said. “My mentors, teachers, friends, mentees and colleagues from AAJA were there for me no matter when I was laughing, crying, anxious or scared. They inspire me daily to improve and catch me when I feel the lowest of lows. I’m not here for returns, because I have gotten plenty. It’s truly an honor to contribute, donate, volunteer and share my perspectives with AAJA.”

Prior to joining Public Integrity, Ding co-managed The Associated Press’s philanthropic fundraising efforts, maintaining relationships with funders and between funders and various editorial departments at the AP. They raised more than $3 million at the AP for inclusive journalism, education, climate and investigative journalism. 

Prior to AP, Ding managed a portfolio of journalism grants at The International Women’s Media Foundation, was the communications and inclusion manager at the Pulitzer Center and a research and marketing analyst for NBC Sports.

Founded in 1989, the Center for Public Integrity is one of the oldest nonprofit news organizations in the country and is dedicated to investigating systems and circumstances that contribute to inequality in the United States.

The post Public Integrity’s Jin Ding named AAJA Member of the Year appeared first on Center for Public Integrity.

This post was originally published on Center for Public Integrity.

The election of America’s first Black president was expected to begin a post-racial period where communities would work together to address systemic racism and ensure that racial prejudice became a social problem of the past. 

But that never happened. Barack Obama’s election became a trigger for white grievance and violence over Black progress.

In his new book, American Whitelash: A Changing Nation and the Cost of Progress, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Wesley Lowery documents the rise of white supremacy violence in the decade after Obama was elected. 

Lowery believes that studying this methodically, interrogating its intentions and ideologies, is a way to figure out what could be done to stop it from happening again and again. 

Lowery, 32, took a keen interest in the stories of people who became direct victims of hate crimes but their stories were not deemed newsworthy enough to reach a national audience. In essence, he shows that white grievance drives violence. And as he builds the narrative with each chapter, Lowery examines many issues our society and institutions have not addressed to provide transparency and justice, like the FBI failure until 2013 to document hate crime statistics for certain ethnicities or groups, including Sikhs.

Lowery’s book could be seen as a continuation of or complement to Carol Anderson’s White Rage, as he noted. Regardless, Lowery’s main motive is to send a blunt message to the country — Americans need to take white supremacist violence seriously. 

While Lowery admits these problems can’t be solved with one book, he hopes that American Whitelash prompts a much-needed conversation our country needs to have about racism, white supremacy and hate crimes. Documenting the stories of those who fell victims of whitelash is a first step to acknowledging the history of ongoing violence against people of color in this country. 

How we tell the American story, Lowery points out, is an ongoing battle that “each successive generation would have to engage anew.”

Public Integrity spoke with Lowery, who is currently serving on Public Integrity’s board of directors, early this week after he returned from London, where he was promoting his book. It’s set to be released on June 27. 

This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

Q. This book documents how Barack Obama’s election became a trigger for white supremacy violence. Do you think this is a cultural phenomenon? 

I think sometimes there’s a presentism. We want to believe that the moment that we are in is so unique and so different when in reality we are often living inside of the echo of history. 

And so what we’ve seen time and time again, whether it be following the slave revolts, whether it be in light of the abolitionist movement and emancipation and the advances of the Civil Rights movement. When there have been these real blows on behalf of equality and multi-racial democracy and the losses of structured white supremacy that we have seen this type of societal and cultural backlash and violence. … And had we done our reading and if we knew our history, we should have expected this type of violent response.

Q. I often say that in order to move forward as a country, we must accept our past. Do you think that America will ever do that?

Sometimes people invoke our history and try to talk about or focus on parts of it that are difficult. The response is very defensive. “Well, you say that we’re inherently racists or irredeemably broken.” I actually think it’s the opposite, right? People who offer critiques do so because they believe it can be different. They believe it can be overcome. They believe it can be remedied, but they know that it cannot be if we’re unwilling to face it. 

So one of the reasons it’s important for us to understand our history, understand that this has happened before: … We can more aggressively and effectively combat it and make sure that our future doesn’t have to look like our past. And so the focus on the realities of our history is not about making people feel bad, it’s about saying that we don’t have to be like our previous generations were. But the only way to do that is by understanding the truth of what happened previously. 

Q. You wrote: “Revisionist history has long been one of white supremacy’s favorite weapons. Our history is simply a story that we tell ourselves. So often the tale that we tell is a lie.” How do we, as a society, combat this? 

First, we fight for accurate recording and teaching. And at every point in our society, there have been movements to undermine the way we are taught and how we remember. And there have been people who have stood up to demand that we tell the truth. 

I think that the more we teach and the more information we provide, the better off we will be in terms of having a populace that is equipped to grapple with hard histories and to tell more of the truth. 

I think it is hard, right, that in a given moment we understand why the media coverage and why the public memory becomes such a battleground. … Because there are political victories and losses. There’ll be one with how we will remember something like January 6. It’s still actively, day to day, relevant to our politics and to people who have power and who are removed from power or might rise again. 

But I think it really does fall to a class of historians, journalists who are historians in many ways, and other people who care about reality. I think it falls to us to insist upon the accurate recording of what happens day in and day out here in the country. And so, you know, I think a big part when objective reality is being attacked and comes under question, simply telling the truth in public can be a radical act, but I think it is our job in these moments, to tell the truth in public. 

Q. What do you hope will be the biggest takeaway for people when they read this book?

When we think about hate groups, and when we think about the kind of devout racists … not about the kind of low-level interpersonal prejudice, but when we are talking about devout racists, I sometimes feel that because it’s ugly, we turn away from it. We don’t want to pay attention to it. We don’t want to interrogate it. We don’t want to think about it. That we think about these things as unexplainable. 

But for me as a journalist, sitting and watching the events of the last few years, it just felt as if there needed to be some effort to try to contextualize, both historically and societally, what we were seeing: That these people, these movements, these groups have coherent ideologies. And when I say coherent, I don’t mean to say that they’re true or accurate. But there’s a real ideological underpinning and once we understand what that underpinning is, that empowers us or enables us to begin reconstructing it or attacking it. 

The post ‘American Whitelash’: Lowery examines how white grievance drives violence appeared first on Center for Public Integrity.

This post was originally published on Center for Public Integrity.

The Center for Public Integrity has won the 2023 Excellence in Financial Journalism Award for best audio reporting for Season 2 of its podcast, “The Heist.”

“The Wealth Vortex,” produced in partnership with Transmitter Media, follows Iowa entrepreneur ReShonda Young as she tries to start a Black-owned bank to help address the racial wealth gap in her community, a local manifestation of a nationwide problem fueled by centuries of discrimination, institutionalized theft and violence.

The award, presented by the New York State Society of Certified Public Accountants, recognizes “exemplary coverage of a business, financial or economic news story using radio, podcasts, social media or other online audio formats.”

Twenty-one people across the two media organizations worked on the podcast and related elements. That team includes host and reporter Jamie Smith Hopkins from Public Integrity and producers Camille Petersen, Mitchell Johnson and Isabel Carter and executive editor Sara Nics from Transmitter Media.

Season 2 of “The Heist” has also been recognized this year with a Peabody nomination; an award from the Shaufler Prize; a Signal Award silver medal; a “Best in Business” award; a National Association of Black Journalists award nomination; and finalist honors from the Ambie Awards, Dateline Awards, WAN-IFRA North American Digital Media Awards, Online Journalism Awards and the INN Nonprofit News Awards.

Other Public Integrity work this year has been honored with the Paul Tobenkin Award, a National Headliner Award, the Sigma Award recognizing the world’s best data journalism, Mental Health America’s 2023 Media Award, Dateline Awards and the Gracie Awards. 

Founded in 1989, the Center for Public Integrity is one of the oldest nonprofit news organizations in the country and is dedicated to investigating systems and circumstances that contribute to inequality in the United States.

The post Public Integrity’s ‘The Heist’ wins Excellence in Financial Journalism award appeared first on Center for Public Integrity.

This post was originally published on Center for Public Integrity.

The impact of two data journalism pioneers, including a former Center for Public Integrity data editor, will be honored at the Investigative Reporters & Editors annual conference in Orlando June 24.

The late David Donald and Tom Torok will be inducted into IRE’s Ring of Honor, “celebrating members who have made a significant contribution to the organization and to investigative journalism.” 

Both had accomplished U.S. journalism careers while playing pivotal roles in spreading the power of data journalism overseas — Donald in western Europe and Torok in Russia and Ukraine.

Torok, who passed away last year, led The New York Times’ data journalism team to eight Pulitzer Prizes in 13 years, and was previously a Pulitzer-finalist reporter and columnist for the Philadelphia Inquirer. In addition to training other journalists in the U.S. and abroad, Torok developed innovative data analysis tools that he freely shared with the industry.

Donald, who died in 2016 of complications from mesothelioma, had already trained and mentored countless journalists around the world as IRE’s training director before joining Public Integrity as data editor in 2008. In that role, he worked with massive data sets to power investigations that uncovered $11 billion in fraudulent Medicare billing, the impact of subprime lending on the U.S. economy and the systemic failure to accurately report the prevalence of sexual assault on college campuses. He was recognized with many of journalism’s highest honors, including the Peabody, Philip Meyer, Tom Renner, IRE, James K. Batten, Dart and Robert F. Kennedy Journalism awards.

Donald went on to serve as data editor of the Investigative Reporting Workshop and data journalist in residence at American University, working with Public Integrity founder Charles A. Lewis. There he developed the vision for a tool that would allow reporters to sort through large data sets without advanced data journalism training. Donald’s colleagues saw through what became The Accountability Project. It was developed at IRW and is now housed and supported by Public Integrity.

In his original proposal for the project, Donald stressed the need for data among accountability professionals.

“The key is the link among databases that provide the connections that allow us to hold the powerful accountable for their decisions and actions,” he wrote.

“In preparing David’s nomination, I heard from people all over the world who shared similar stories about how much they learned from him and how kind and patient he was,” said Public Integrity Senior Editor Jennifer LaFleur, who helped make his plan for The Accountability Project a reality at IRW. “Having trained with David around the world, I got to experience that first hand along with his wit, wisdom and unbeatable 20 questions skills.”

Donald received a master’s degree in journalism from Ohio’s Kent State University in 1997, a degree he completed while working in computer-assisted journalism at the Savannah Morning News in Georgia.

Joyce Donald, his wife of 34 years, told The Washington Post in 2016 that David “taught himself SQL and other computer languages, and he’d still read me poetry at night when we were together.”

Public Integrity data journalist Joe Yerardi recalled applying for a data internship with the organization in 2012 because of Donald’s work and reputation. 

“I learned a ton in my four months here that served me very well when I graduated and started my first ‘real’ reporting job. That’s the stuff I’d expected to learn,” Yerardi said. “What I hadn’t expected to learn was just what a kind person he was. Like I said, I was an intern here. Not yet out of school. I made my share of boneheaded, rookie mistakes. The patience and kindness David showed in helping me work through my mistakes was something else. The fact that someone of his stature — at the top of his game, so to speak — was willing to spend so much time helping a lowly intern was kind of revelatory to me. Journalism has a reputation as an industry of big egos and ruthless competition.”

Yerardi learned an important lesson from his time working with Donald: “that how you treat people — especially those lower on the professional totem pole than you — is equally important as the stories you byline.”

“Just as much as his incredible journalism, I think his incredible kindness is the legacy with which he’s left many of us,” Yerardi said.

The IRE board established the Ring of Honor in 2022.

Nominations to the Ring of Honor can be made in tribute to current or retired IRE members or in memory of deceased members.

The post Data journalism pioneers join IRE’s Ring of Honor appeared first on Center for Public Integrity.

This post was originally published on Center for Public Integrity.

Investigations by the Center for Public Integrity into student homelessness and community-based care of people with intellectual and developmental disabilities were recognized with 2023 Dateline Awards by the Washington, D.C., chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists Wednesday.

With “Institution of One,” which was named best online non-breaking news story, reporter Amy Silverman painted a nuanced picture of what life is like decades after courts ruled that state institutions should be replaced by community-based services. The project was praised for its humanizing depiction of people with disabilities and accessibility considerations, including a “plain language” translation.

“This story explored the challenge of finding safe homes for people with complex needs with the care and nuance the topic deserves,” said Public Integrity Senior Editor Jennifer LaFleur. “As one reader pointed out, too often society does not see individuals with IDD as people: ‘The way you wrote your article turns this on its head.’”

Translating the story into plain language, a writing style that makes difficult concepts easier to read for people with intellectual or developmental disabilities, uses shorter sentences and simpler words, but it doesn’t leave out information. Public Integrity also commissioned a story summary in American Sign Language.

“Unhoused and Undercounted,” an investigation Public Integrity data journalist Amy DiPierro and senior reporter Corey Mitchell pursued in collaboration with The Seattle Times, Street Sense Media and WAMU/DCist, was named the 2023 Dateline Awards’ best online series.

An innovative national data analysis showed that more than 300,000 unhoused students are not being identified by local school districts across the country, keeping them from receiving assistance as required by federal law. Members of Congress called for accountability after the project was published and voted to increase funding to help local school districts address the issue.

Public Integrity collaborated with local newsrooms across the country on the project, building a reporting toolkit and sharing data that makes it possible to pursue a similar investigation in most communities. The team also created versions of those resources for student journalists to pursue the story.

Previously, Unhoused and Undercounted was recognized as part of the short list for the Sigma Awards, recognizing the world’s best data journalism.

“The Unhoused and Undercounted project holds school districts and the federal government accountable for how they’re treating some of the country’s most vulnerable students,” said Public Integrity’s Jamie Smith Hopkins, one of the editors on the series. “This was a powerful collaboration that illustrates how much better investigations can be when journalists from different newsrooms work together.”

Four other Public Integrity projects were named finalists in the 2023 Dateline Awards, including Harm’s Way, an investigation into the federal government’s failure to help communities requiring relocation due to climate change, also nominated for best online series; Unequal Burden, an investigation into state and federal tax inequality, for best online beat reporting; The Wealth Vortex, about one woman’s fight against the racial wealth gap, for best online business reporting; and our feature on a Navajo man’s battle in the sickening aftermath of the federal government’s quest for uranium on tribal land.

Public Integrity’s journalists have been recognized with numerous honors in recent months, including the Paul Tobenkin Award, a Peabody Award nomination, a National Headliner Award, the Sigma Award recognizing the world’s best data journalism, two finalist honors for the Shaufler Prize for reporting about underserved people, the Society for Advancing Business Editing and Writing’s “Best in Business” awards, the Gracie Awards honoring media produced by and for women, and the Signal Awards recognizing the country’s best podcasts. 

Founded in 1989, the Center for Public Integrity is one of the oldest nonprofit news organizations in the country and is dedicated to investigating systems and circumstances that contribute to inequality in the United States.

The post Dateline Awards honor Public Integrity stories on homelessness, disabilities appeared first on Center for Public Integrity.

This post was originally published on Center for Public Integrity.

The Center for Public Integrity’s model for working with local newsrooms on investigative reporting projects will be featured at the national Collaborative Journalism Summit June 6-7 in Washington, D.C.

Public Integrity Director of Audience Lisa Yanick Litwiller and Audience Engagement Editor Ashley Clarke will give a keynote address on how the organization has improved the accuracy, reach and impact of its reporting about inequality in the U.S. by partnering with local journalists closest to the communities centered in and most impacted by the journalism. They’ll talk about how Public Integrity has adapted investigative collaborations to both support the unique needs of and amplify and learn from the talent and knowledge within local newsrooms, and how Public Integrity’s journalism has gotten better in the process.

The Collaborative Journalism Summit is organized by the Center for Cooperative Media, a Montclair State University-based nonprofit that has supported and helped guide significant growth in the amount of journalism produced by newsrooms working together.

Public Integrity’s national collaborations will be featured in a three-part keynote at the summit on June 6 along with presentations about local reporting collaborations by Resolve Philly and international collaborations by editors from the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists and the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project.

When Public Integrity is pursuing an investigation that involves national data analysis or findings that could be reported in any given community, the work is shared ahead of time with dozens of local newsrooms. 

Most recently, “Unhoused and Undercounted,” an investigation showing that more than 300,000 homeless students across the country are not being identified and receiving services as required by federal law, included a reporting collaboration with The Seattle Times, WAMU/DCist and Street Sense Media, a newspaper produced by and for the unhoused in Washington, D.C.  Additionally, Public Integrity shared localized data, built a reporting toolkit and held regular office hours for additional local collaborators months in advance of publishing the investigation, which made the short list of the Sigma Awards for data journalism. 

To reach those most impacted by the findings of the investigation – students – Public Integrity built reporting guides for student journalists, presenting the project at a national high school journalism conference in April. The effort led to local reporting published by the Central Times student newspaper at Naperville Central High School in Illinois, as well as the start of a student and educator arm of Public Integrity’s growing collaborator list.

Previous collaborations include “Criminalizing Kids,” which investigated the disproportionate harm that police presence in schools have on Black and Latino students and kids with disabilities, and “Harm’s Way,” which exposed the federal government’s failure to assist communities facing relocation due to the impact of climate change.

Upcoming collaborative investigations will tackle immigration, voting rights and environmental justice issues.

Public Integrity’s journalists have been recognized with numerous honors in recent months, including a National Headliner Award, the Paul Tobenkin Award, a Peabody Award nomination, the Sigma Award recognizing the world’s best data journalism, two finalist honors for the Shaufler Prize for reporting about underserved people, the Society for Advancing Business Editing and Writing’s “Best in Business” awards, the Gracie Awards honoring media produced by and for women, and the Signal Awards recognizing the country’s best podcasts.

Founded in 1989, the Center for Public Integrity is one of the oldest nonprofit news organizations in the country and is dedicated to investigating systems and circumstances that contribute to inequality in the United States.

The post Public Integrity’s collaborative investigation model featured at conference appeared first on Center for Public Integrity.

This post was originally published on Center for Public Integrity.

Journalists from the Center for Public Integrity will offer advice and training on investigative reporting and data journalism that confronts inequality at the annual Investigative Reporters & Editors conference June 22-25 in Orlando.

In addition to its own national investigations, one of the organization’s priorities is to build investigative reporting capacity and expertise at local news organizations.Senior reporters Corey Mitchell and Kristian Hernández, respectively, will speak about investigating inequality in education and reporting tools and tips for covering immigration issues in your community, including finding stories in data.

Senior Editor Jennifer LaFleur will lead sessions on editing the data-driven investigation, gathering and cleaning data with R, and establishing a newsroom disability beat.

Editor Mc Nelly Torres will lead a three-hour master class on how to manage investigative reporters — people who are born to challenge authority.

And Public Integrity CEO Paul Cheung will speak as part of a panel on “how to build a pipeline of talent and quality journalism.”

Public Integrity’s journalists have been recognized with numerous honors in recent months, including a National Headliner Award, the Paul Tobenkin Award, a Peabody Award nomination, the Sigma Award recognizing the world’s best data journalism, two finalist honors for the Shaufler Prize for reporting about underserved people, the Society for Advancing Business Editing and Writing’s “Best in Business” awards, the Gracie Awards honoring media produced by and for women, and the Signal Awards recognizing the country’s best podcasts.

Founded in 1989, the Center for Public Integrity is one of the oldest nonprofit news organizations in the country and is dedicated to investigating systems and circumstances that contribute to inequality in the United States.

The post Public Integrity staff share insights on investigating inequality appeared first on Center for Public Integrity.

This post was originally published on Center for Public Integrity.

The Center for Public Integrity was recognized Tuesday with a Mental Health America 2023 media award for Christine Herman’s reporting about the challenges families face accessing mental health care. The story was published in partnership with Side Effects Public Media as part of the national Mental Health Parity Collaborative led by the Carter Center’s Rosalynn Carter Fellowships for Mental Health Journalism. 

Herman’s story focused on the lack of affordable, sufficient treatment for kids with significant mental health problems, which has pushed some families to give up custody to get care. It also explored efforts states are making to reform their mental health care systems.

“I first learned about the issue of custody relinquishment to access mental health services as a local reporter in Illinois,” Herman said. “It’s an unbearably heartbreaking issue. We’re talking about parents who are desperate to save their children’s lives and finding themselves faced with incredible obstacles.”

“By highlighting a state that has found a way to solve this problem, my hope is that places that have yet to address this issue can be held accountable for their inaction,” Herman added. “This is not an unsolvable problem, but it does take resources and an incredible amount of coordination between numerous government entities to be successful.”

MHA’s 2023 Media Award recognizes journalists, authors, digital platforms, media outlets, television shows and filmmakers that have tackled the issues of mental illness and addiction — and in doing so, have educated, informed, and broken down stigma and shame around these issues.

Other media award winners include Netflix’s “Untold: Breaking Point”; ABC30 for “A Critical State of Mind,” a five-part documentary series taking a deep look at the state of mental health in California; Renee Shaw, Director of Public Affairs and Moderator at KET, which reported on issues such as opioid addiction and youth mental health; and Morra Aarons-Mele, host of “The Anxious Achiever” podcast. 

Founded in 1989, the Center for Public Integrity is one of the oldest nonprofit news organizations in the country and is dedicated to investigating systems and circumstances that contribute to inequality in the United States.

The post Public Integrity report wins award for mental health coverage appeared first on Center for Public Integrity.

This post was originally published on Center for Public Integrity.

Yvette Cabrera has won the 2023 Paul Tobenkin Memorial Award for a powerful Center for Public Integrity narrative she wrote last year about the personal battle a Navajo activist faced as he sought accountability for federal government uranium mining that has sickened generations of his people.

The award, administered by Columbia University and honoring the late New York Herald Tribune reporter, recognizes “outstanding achievements in reporting on racial or religious hatred, intolerance or discrimination in the United States.” 

Over the course of four decades, an estimated 30 million tons of uranium ore was extracted from land that is part of or near the Navajo Nation. Cabrera started out reporting on the work Earl Tulley was doing to hold the federal government accountable for high rates of cancer stemming from the federal push to build an arsenal of nuclear weapons, as well as to get mine waste cleaned up. It became a story about Tulley’s own discovery of and battle with cancer in the context of his work.

Cabrera’s investigation, Columbia Journalism School wrote in its announcement of the award, “is a story of unbreakable courage in the face of systemic cruelty.”

“I’m so honored to receive this recognition from the Columbia Journalism School faculty for a story that has meant so much to me,” Cabrera said. “In the midst of a pandemic that isolated so many of us from each other, I had the privilege of interviewing Earl Tulley, who understands intrinsically how deeply rooted the Navajo Nation’s stories are to the land. Every conversation we had, every experience he relayed, reinforced the importance of building community via our words despite our struggles.”

She added: “In the midst of his painful journey to battle cancer, he spoke to me because he remained steadfastly committed to healing the land he cares so much about from the harms of uranium mining, and calling for justice on behalf of his people.”

The story was co-published with ICT, formerly Indian Country Today.

“Cabrera manages a rare feat with the story,” said her editor, Public Integrity journalist Jamie Smith Hopkins. “It’s deeply upsetting — unsparing in its explanation of the repercussions of government actions and inaction — but also powerfully uplifting. Tulley’s work speaks to the difference a person can make. His hopes for the future are a reminder that no one works alone.”

Cabrera joined Public Integrity as a senior reporter last year after reporting on environmental justice at Grist and HuffPost. 

Her reporting on toxic lead contamination across the country, including an investigation into the legacy of industrial lead pollution in communities of color, has received widespread praise. Her Grist investigation, “Ghosts of Polluters Past,” recently won an international Sigma Award in recognition of the world’s best data journalism, just as Public Integrity published the project’s final installment. 

In addition to her role at Public Integrity, Cabrera is president of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists and has helped lead efforts to increase the number of journalists of color who cover environmental and climate issues.

Public Integrity journalists have won the Paul Tobenkin Award four times, including twice in the past three years. In 2021, the award recognized the organization’s “Hidden Hardships” investigation into pandemic mistreatment of immigrant workers keeping the country’s food supply going. Other past Tobenkin Award winners have included journalists from The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Associated Press, ProPublica, the Los Angeles Times and The Chicago Reporter.

Public Integrity’s journalists have been recognized with numerous honors in recent months, including the Sigma Award, two finalist honors for the Shaufler Prize for reporting about underserved people, the Society for Advancing Business Editing and Writing’s “Best in Business” awards, the Gracie Awards honoring media produced by and for women, and the Signal Awards recognizing the country’s best podcasts. 

Founded in 1989, the Center for Public Integrity is one of the oldest nonprofit news organizations in the country and is dedicated to investigating systems and circumstances that contribute to inequality in the United States.

The post Public Integrity’s Yvette Cabrera wins 2023 Paul Tobenkin Award appeared first on Center for Public Integrity.

This post was originally published on Center for Public Integrity.

Work by a Center for Public Integrity board member about a newspaper’s racist legacy in Philadelphia and by a Public Integrity contributor about the toxic impact of the tire industry in Akron, Ohio, is the winner and runner-up of the 2022 Vernon Jarrett Medal for Journalistic Excellence.

Wesley Lowery and Yanick Rice Lamb will be recognized by Morgan State University’s School of Global Journalism & Communication, which sponsors the award, in a ceremony at the National Press Club April 6. 

The award is named for Vernon Jarrett, the late columnist for the Chicago Defender,  Chicago Tribune and Chicago Sun-Times, who was also a founding member and former president of the National Association of Black Journalists. It recognizes “a journalist who has published or broadcast stories that are of significant importance or had a significant impact on some aspect of Black life in America.”

Lowery, who joined Public Integrity’s board in 2021, is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author and contributing editor at the Marshall Project. He will receive a $10,000 prize and a summer intern from Morgan State in recognition of his work on “Black City, White Paper,” an investigation into the Philadelphia Inquirer’s racial reckoning in the wake of George Floyd’s murder.

Lamb, a journalism professor in the Cathy Hughes School of Communications, as well as a doctoral candidate at Howard University, will receive a $7,500 prize in recognition of her investigation last year for Public Integrity and Belt Magazine, “Unintended Consequences: The Rubber Industry’s Toxic Legacy in Akron.” 

It was praised by judges as “an exemplary piece of research about deindustrialization and its impact on a marginalized community.”

“The storytelling is compelling and comprehensive, engaging the reader all along the investigative road as you discuss the continuing harm caused by the rubber tire factories by Black residents in your hometown,” they wrote.

“Like the judges, I was blown away by the power and detail of this year’s entries,” said Morgan State School of Global Journalism & Communications Dean Jackie Jones. “Wes and Yanick’s work not only meets the criteria for the Jarrett medal, but delivers on the promise that having Black people in the newsrooms of this country provides variety and perspective that not only serve under-covered communities, but expands the knowledge base for all of us.”

Previous Jarrett Medal winners are Dr. Kaye Whitehead, WEAA-FM public affairs host and Associate Professor at Loyola University (2021); Errin Haines, The 19th, and Adam Serwer, The Atlantic (2020); Audra D.S. Burch, The New York Times (2019); Philadelphia Inquirer and Daily News columnist Helen Ubiñas (2018); Philadelphia Inquirer and Daily News reporter Mensah Dean (2017); Kirsten West Savali, a writer, cultural critic and associate editor of The Root (2016); and Dr. Stacey Patton, then a reporter for The Chronicle of Higher Education (2015).

Founded in 1989, the Center for Public Integrity is one of the oldest nonprofit news organizations in the country and is dedicated to investigating systems and circumstances that contribute to inequality in the United States.

The post Public Integrity board member, contributor receive 2022 Vernon Jarrett Medal appeared first on Center for Public Integrity.

This post was originally published on Center for Public Integrity.

An investigation the Center for Public Integrity produced with Scripps News has won a Gracie Award in recognition of the country’s best work “created by women, for women and about women in all facets of media and entertainment.”

“Attacked Behind the Wheel” found a “disturbing pattern of workplace violence in an industry that has tried to recruit more women but failed to protect them from sexual assault.” The project had immediate impact, including the opening of a criminal investigation.

The project included both a Scripps video documentary and Public Integrity long-form reporting that journalists from both organizations worked on together. The team included Public Integrity Senior Reporter Alexia Fernández Campbell, Public Integrity editor Mc Nelly Torres, Scripps’ Claire Malloy and Jennifer Smart and independent journalist Natasha Del Toro. 

“Investigating sexual violence against female truck drivers is one of the hardest assignments I’ve ever had,” Fernández Campbell said. “I’m proud of the work we did with Scripps News to bring these women’s stories to light and to hold federal agencies accountable for their weak oversight of trucking apprenticeship programs.”

“Editing this important investigative project was one of the most gratifying experiences I had as an editor at Public Integrity last year,” Torres said. “How this story was crafted became an important goal for us because we wanted the final product to do justice to the survivors.” 

Public Integrity and Scripps News, previously known as Newsy, have collaborated before, including on an award-winning 2018 investigation, “Blowout,” that showed how the U.S.’s fossil fuel exports were fueling global climate change.

The Gracie Awards were named after the late actress Gracie Allen and focus on women who are making positive change and who further the discussion of what a fulfilling career in media looks like.” They are presented by the Alliance for Women in Media, which was founded in 1951 as the American Women in Radio and Television, originally an offshoot of the National Association of Broadcasters.

Public Integrity’s journalists have been recognized with numerous honors in recent months, including the Sigma Award recognizing the world’s best data journalism, the Shaufler Prize for reporting about underserved people, the Society for Advancing Business Editing and Writing’s “Best in Business” awards and the Signal Awards recognizing the country’s best podcasts. 

Founded in 1989, the Center for Public Integrity is one of the oldest nonprofit news organizations in the country and is dedicated to investigating systems and circumstances that contribute to inequality in the United States.

The post Public Integrity ‘Attacked Behind the Wheel’ investigation wins Gracie Award appeared first on Center for Public Integrity.

This post was originally published on Center for Public Integrity.

Center for Public Integrity journalists accepted awards at Arizona State University on Thursday night for two projects that illuminated the impacts of — and the fight against — discrimination.

“The Wealth Vortex” — about one woman’s efforts to combat the racial wealth gap in her community — and “Cheated at Work” — about wage theft targeting vulnerable workers — took second and third place, respectively, in the Shaufler Prize in Journalism. The prize honors work that advances understanding of issues facing underserved people in society.

Inside Climate News’ “The Superfund Next Door” took the top prize, and the Howard Center for Investigative Journalism at the University of Maryland’s “Mega Billions: The Great Lottery Wealth Transfer” won the student category.

“Each of these stories, each one, touches not just on the now but on the very, very complicated history that led to these problems,” Pauline Arrillaga, professor and executive editor of ASU’s Carnegie-Knight News21 initiative, told the audience at the reception event. “I often tell my students, especially when you’re reporting on underserved communities and communities of color, you really have to be in touch and in tune with that complicated history.”

Journalists involved with the winning projects discussed their findings at the event. A common thread was systems and institutions failing to protect people’s rights — to an uncontaminated community, to an equal shot at economic stability, to be paid what you’re owed under the law. 

“Our mission is to investigate inequality, and the wealth gap in America is at the forefront,” said Janeen Jones, Public Integrity’s design editor, who accepted the award on behalf of her colleague Jamie Smith Hopkins and the Public Integrity and Transmitter Media teams producing The Wealth Vortex stories and podcast.

Public Integrity data reporter Joe Yerardi and Susan Ferriss, a former Public Integrity reporter, shared how data obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request and a deep understanding of the beat led to an investigation about guest workers cheated out of pay.

ASU’s Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication administers the Shaufler Prize, now in its second year.

Founded in 1989, the Center for Public Integrity is one of the oldest nonprofit news organizations in the country and is dedicated to investigating systems and circumstances that contribute to inequality in the United States.

The post Two Public Integrity projects honored by Shaufler Prize appeared first on Center for Public Integrity.

This post was originally published on Center for Public Integrity.

Investigative reporting by Center for Public Integrity journalists about student homelessness and the legacy of pollution in communities of color was recognized among the best data journalism in the world on Friday at the 2023 Sigma Awards.

Senior reporter Yvette Cabrera’s work on the toxic legacy of lead contamination in American cities while a journalist at Grist was recognized with a Sigma Award as one of the 11 best data journalism investigations in the world, one of only four from the U.S. to make the list. The final installment of that project, looking at solutions, will be published by Public Integrity and Grist this month.

“Unhoused and Undercounted,” an investigation by Public Integrity data journalist Amy DiPierro and senior reporter Corey Mitchell in partnership with The Seattle Times, Street Sense Media and WAMU/DCist, made the Sigma Awards’ shortlist, among the 60 best data journalism investigations in the world out of 638 entries. They used a ground-breaking comparison of federal education data to show that local school districts undercounted more than 300,000 homeless students across the country and failed to provide services as required by federal law.

Unhoused and Undercounted

Federal law requires that public schools assist homeless students to help break what could become an inescapable cycle of hardship. But many of the students who need that aid fall through the cracks.

Read more

“We’re excited for the recognition in an inspiring year for data journalism,” said Public Integrity editor Jamie Smith Hopkins, the lead editor on the Unhoused and Undercounted project. “A powerful data analysis can help people fix problems, fight discrimination and live better lives.”

Cabrera’s series, in collaboration with Grist senior data reporter Clayton Aldern, built on her years of meticulous testing for lead in the soils of Santa Ana, California.

“Soil lead contamination is a pervasive, dangerous problem in urban centers throughout the United States, yet because lead particles are invisible, this threat is difficult to pinpoint, particularly the hot spots that endanger the health of so many children in low-income neighborhoods and communities of color,” Cabrera said. “What’s most rewarding is how the community of Santa Ana has galvanized around this issue and pressed the city for action, resulting in a 2022 general plan update that pledges to address this toxic threat.”

Public Integrity, a Pulitzer Prize-winning nonprofit news organization that confronts inequality through investigative reporting, partners with hundreds of local news organizations across the country. That includes collaborative investigations, editing, training, mentorship and access to data sets and analyses that help local journalists expose inequity and hold powerful interests accountable.

Months before publishing Unhoused and Undercounted, Public Integrity shared its data analysis with local journalists across the country and provided a reporting toolkit and office hours to help them apply the investigation to issues facing homeless students in their regions.

Public Integrity journalists regularly share knowledge about data journalism, investigative reporting and confronting inequality with industry peers. Cabrera is president of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists and has helped build programs to increase the number of reporters of color covering environmental issues. 

Earlier this month, Public Integrity announced that it had acquired and will grow The Accountability Project, an innovative platform that allows journalists to search 1.8 billion public records and counting, as well as organize resulting data for analysis in reporting. It has been used in award-winning and impactful accountability journalism across the country.

Founded in 1989, the Center for Public Integrity is one of the oldest nonprofit news organizations in the country and is dedicated to investigating systems and circumstances that contribute to inequality in the United States.

The post Public Integrity reporters’ work honored among best data journalism in world appeared first on Center for Public Integrity.

This post was originally published on Center for Public Integrity.

The Center for Public Integrity won four business journalism awards Thursday for investigations reported in collaboration with other newsrooms.

Judges in the Best in Business Awards from the Society for Advancing Business Editing and Writing, or SABEW, selected winners from a “record” 1,182 entries submitted by 193 news organizations.

Public Integrity’s winning projects:

Attacked Behind the Wheel. The project, in partnership with Scripps News, won its division in the travel/transportation category. The months-long investigation found widespread abuse in the trucking industry: Many female drivers reported that they’ve been raped and attacked by their co-workers and trainers while on the road as part of an apprenticeship program that is partly subsidized by the U.S. government. 

The reporting had an impact even before the project published on Dec. 11. In response to our findings, a California law enforcement agency said that it had opened an investigation into the sexual assault reported by one of the women interviewed.  

SABEW judges wrote that the investigation “tackles what is an important human-interest story and business issue. The entry stands out in the package for bringing to life the plight of women truckers working in a frequently hostile environment.”

Read the story and watch the documentary here.

Harm’s Way. This series about climate relocation, in partnership with Columbia Journalism Investigations and Type Investigations, won its division in the energy/natural resources category. The project revealed that the federal government has known for years that millions of Americans will be forced from their homes by worsening climate impacts, but officials have not taken steps to effectively help.

The investigation showed that weak action neglecting vulnerable communities has left residents — often people of color — in increasingly dangerous conditions.

“As the entry demonstrated,” judges wrote, “the government bureaucracy is not prepared at all for the deluge of people who will need assistance to uproot their lives and relocate. The entry delivered fresh insights and powerful first-hand accounts.”

Read the series here. A collaboration that included reporters at local and regional newsrooms around the country produced powerful pieces about impacts in their communities.

Unequal Burden. Public Integrity partnered with ICT, formerly Indian Country Today, to co-report this series about states worsening inequality through their taxes, rather than easing it. The series won its division in SABEW’s explanatory category; judges said the “breadth of reporting was impressive.”

The stories showed how states extract a greater share of poor residents’ income than wealthier people’s and how avowed white supremacists set that in motion, how four decades of federal tax cuts help explain spiraling inequality, and how states undercut tribes by taxing activities on tribal lands.

“We’re asking people to fund government programs even when they can’t afford basic needs, like food and shelter,” Ariel Jurow Kleiman at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles told us as we reported the series. “That strikes me as profoundly unfair.”

The Wealth Vortex. This podcast and series of text stories, in partnership with Transmitter Media, followed Iowa entrepreneur ReShonda Young as she tried to open what would be her state’s only Black-owned bank — an exploration of what one person can and can’t do about the entrenched racial wealth gap in this country. 

It won its division in SABEW’s podcast/audio category.

“This podcast series took a single idea and developed it like a great, long-form magazine story,” the judges wrote. 

The series was also recognized with an honorable mention in its division in the banking/finance category. Those judges wrote, “This entry is powerful and raises profound questions about our society.”

Find the series here. It was earlier recognized as a finalist in the Ambie Awards, often called the Oscars of podcasting; was a Signal Awards silver award honoree; and took second place in this year’s Shaufler Prize in Journalism.

The post Public Integrity and partners win multiple business reporting awards appeared first on Center for Public Integrity.

This post was originally published on Center for Public Integrity.

The Center for Public Integrity will steward and grow a powerful tool that puts public records at the fingertips of journalists across the country, thanks to support from the Reva and David Logan Foundation and the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation.

The Accountability Project, launched by the Investigative Reporting Workshop in 2019, is an innovative platform that allows journalists to search 1.8 billion public records and counting, as well as organize resulting data for analysis in reporting. It has been used in award-winning and impactful accountability journalism across the country.

Public Integrity, a Pulitzer Prize-winning nonprofit news organization that confronts inequality through investigative reporting, partners with hundreds of local news organizations across the country. That includes collaborative investigations, editing, training, mentorship and access to data sets and analyses that enable local journalists to expose inequity and hold powerful interests accountable.

“TAP will advance Public Integrity’s mission by giving our local news partners access to a deep reservoir of government data so they can hold the powerful to account and equip the public with the knowledge to drive change,” said Public Integrity CEO Paul Cheung.

TAP solves a problem for journalists: Searching across public data sets can be arduous, particularly on deadline. It also creates opportunity: Finding threads across campaign finance data, property records, business ownership and other sources can yield important stories about conflicts of interest, outsized influence and other issues that warrant deeper public scrutiny.

Seeing a need to streamline public data sets, the Investigative Reporting Workshop created TAP with the support of the Reva and David Logan Foundation to put much of that data in one place so journalists, researchers and others could search across otherwise siloed data.

Connections between IRW and Public Integrity run deep. Both were founded by Charles A. Lewis, and TAP was conceived by the late David Donald, a former data editor for both the Investigative Reporting Workshop and Public Integrity.

Jennifer LaFleur, now senior editor at Public Integrity, oversaw the creation and launch of the platform at IRW in 2019, along with lead developer Jacob Fenton, and will now work to expand its use by local journalists.

“I’m thrilled that what began as an idea sketched out on a napkin over lunch has grown so tremendously,” said Lewis, now the emeritus executive editor of IRW. “And I couldn’t think of a better place for it to land than [Public Integrity].” 

TAP began with data related to money in politics and has added data on nonprofits, voters, business licensees and public employees. 

In his original proposal for the project, Donald stressed the need for data among accountability professionals. “The key is the link among databases that provide the connections that allow us to hold the powerful accountable for their decisions and actions,” he wrote.

Everyone who has contributed to TAP at IRW and now Public Integrity has worked to make his dream a reality, building it into a robust search site that now has more than 1.8 billion records.

“I’m so proud of the work that everyone involved with TAP has put in to make it a success,” LaFleur said. “I’m also grateful for the many partners who worked with us, most notably the Midwest Center for Investigative Reporting.”

TAP can be a powerful tool for gathering background information on individuals, organizations and addresses. For example,  searching a single name or address on the name search page will yield a list of hits for that name or address across every data set in the collection. From there, you can start digging deeper.

TAP features a wide array of federal and state data including:

• Campaign contributions, expenditures and lobbying data
• Data on nonprofits nationwide
• Government contracting
• Public employees
• Voter registration

Learn more about the TAP data collections here.

While much of the data is available without an account, some data requires a free login, which you can request here.

Founded in 1989, the Center for Public Integrity is one of the oldest nonprofit news organizations in the country and is dedicated to investigating systems and circumstances that contribute to inequality in the United States.

The post Public Integrity acquires tool to make data more accessible to journalists appeared first on Center for Public Integrity.

This post was originally published on Center for Public Integrity.