Ida B. Wells Society

As the U.S. struggles with a housing shortage, investors continue to exploit a gap in an affordable housing law to raise rents on 115,000 apartments. Congress has repeatedly failed to act.

Investigations by journalists over the past few decades have shed light on the forces that have tried to halt government action on a crisis that scientists have been warning about for more than 50 years. But it’s these kinds of investigations that will continue to hold political leaders accountable and inform the public about climate change and efforts to prevent the implementation of solutions.

Most of Pennsylvania’s 52 county agencies responsible for protecting older adults are failing, in varying degrees, to swiftly review complaints of suspected abuse or neglect and craft plans to keep people safe — in some cases, even in emergencies, a Spotlight PA investigation found. Certain county protective services agencies have taken five or more times the mandated 20 days for determinations in abuse and neglect investigations, according to data obtained from a wide-ranging public records request and analyzed by the news organization.

After being tipped off about unsustainable logging at a state-run oil palm plantation, a reporter started a year-long investigation during which he uncovered “the failure of the plantation business, the environmental impacts, and how they got multiple loans from a local bank.”

Deaths that occur either when a person is in the custody of law enforcement or housed in a correctional facility are largely underreported. That’s because reporting requirements are not enforced federally or in most states. Without accurate data, circumstances leading to unnatural deaths can continue unchecked, including instances of medical negligence and excessive use-of-force. Many researchers, lawmakers and advocates view this issue as a public health emergency. When you get a tip about a death or multiple deaths in your local jail or prison, there are concrete steps you can take to start investigating.

Unlike homes that are licensed by the state, the association’s members are exempt from visits by state inspectors. Instead, the association performs its own inspections, holding its members to standards for hiring staff that government records show to be less rigorous than those used by the state.

Americans have long accumulated wealth by owning their homes, but a new study predicts that spiking insurance rates and climate disasters now herald an era of widespread losses.

The latest version of a bill spurred by a 2022 ProPublica-Chicago Tribune investigation would explicitly prevent police from ticketing students for violations such as vaping or truancy, and require districts to track and disclose police activity.

Two years after a Norfolk Southern train derailment spewed a toxic cloud that drove thousands from their homes, freight trains with the same chemicals from that disaster roll through town — with few steps taken by lawmakers to prevent another disaster.

To find the most useful information for your investigation, you need to figure out where to look. “Think about the hypothesis,” Thompson advises. “Where would information be gathered, and where would it live?”