Uplink Archives

May/June 2007

The scrutiny of lawyers
By Justin Mayo and Ken Armstrong
The Seattle Times

Last year, The Seattle Times published a series of devastating stories revealing secrets kept in our courts — secrets hidden away in files that should never have been sealed. The stories exposed misconduct or negligence by schools, hospitals, lawyers, state agencies, businesses and police.
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Related stories:

Qualifications of justices: Jo Craven McGinty of The New York Times explains how the Times used CAR to sort 40 years of forms in its village justice series, exposing the limited qualifications of numerous judges. Subscribers only : IRE Member | Non-member
Few jailed in child porn crackdown: In North Carolina, law enforcement and prosecutors are stepping up efforts to arrest and charge sex offenders. The WTVD investigative team wanted to find out what happens to people charged with child pornography offenses.
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Resources for reporting on legal issues from IRE and NICAR: Stories, tipsheets and Web resources to help you report on legal issues.
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First Venture: Judges’ financial conflicts draw little scrutiny
By Geoff Davidian
Freelance for Milwaukee Magazine

In a three-year period, four local judges heard more than 200 cases involving companies in which they owned stock, and the state watchdogs never monitored the conflicts.
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USAID: Data tallies growth of faith-based aid projects overseas
By Kevin Baron
Boston Globe correspondent

Kevin Baron’s explains how he went about what he bills as “the first complete review of President Bush’s faithbased initiative in the context of foreign aid and international development.”
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Dynamic Web maps show county-to-county migration
By Ted Mellnik
The Charlotte (N.C.) Observer

After years of wondering how to display county migration in a visually pleasing way, Ted Mellnik found dynamic Web mapping to be the best solution.
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State and local races require do-it-yourself data
By Alex Richards
IRE and NICAR

Just because all state and local level campaign fillings might not be available online doesn’t preclude you from doing a database-driven investigation.
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CDC reports yield data on outbreaks
By Thomas Hargrove
Scripps Howard News Service

Not all states handle food posioning investigations with the same efficiency, a CAR investigation by Thomas Hargrove found.
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Ohio’s background checks miss older DUI arrests
By Jill Riepenhoff
The Columbus Dispatch

The Ohio Department of Motor Vehicles’ “long-standing and ill-conceived policy” allowed numerous people with questionable backgrounds behind the wheel of public school buses in Ohio.
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March/April 2007

Down on the farm
By Sarah Cohen
The Washington Post

Skeptical of the claims of politicians who say farm subsidies are needed to save the small family farm, Dan Morgan, Gilbert M. Gaul and I spent 2006 answering a simple question about federal subsidy programs: Who reaped the benefits from the taxpayer dollars, and did it help the struggling small family farmers that Congress repeatedly promises that subsidies will save?
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Related stories:

Tracking cotton subsidies and learning SQL server on the fly: Megan Clarke of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution recounts how she opted to use an SQL Server instead of her usual tools, Microsoft Access and FoxPro, to analyze 180 million cotton subsidy records.
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Farmsubsidy.org opens access to EU farm payments: Farmsubsidy.org is the driving force in bringing Europe’s farm subsidies into the light. Brigitte Alfter, Tommy Kaas and Nils Mulvad recount the history of this network organization, which uses Freedom of Information laws and computer-assisted reporting to gather and distribute subsidy data from European Union nations.
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Reporting on migrant farm labor: IRE and NICAR's David Walle compiled a list of resources to assist reporters looking into farm labor conditions.
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Resources for reporting on agriculture from IRE and NICAR: Stories, tipsheets and Web resources to help you report on agriculture.
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First Venture: Fluff rules in Puerto Rican Legislature
By Omaya Sosa Pascual
El Nuevo Día

Politics in Puerto Rico are complicated and intense. The current legislature also could be described as frivolous and wasteful, according to a recent computer-assisted investigation by El Nuevo Día.
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Hidden History: Census shows blacks driven from their homes
By Elliot Jaspin
Cox News Service

What began as a simple curiosity during an assingment in Arkansas, eventually became an eight year quest to document one of American history's ugliest trends: racial cleansing.
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CAR book: Ver 1.0 scrutinizes data quality:
By Matt Wynn
IRE and NICAR

“Ver 1.0 Proceedings” addresses the problem of increasingly large, and in some cases increasingly dirty, datasets.
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CAR Tool: Firefox extensions: A geek’s new best friend
By Neil Reisner
Florida International University

There are 2,000 (and counting) Firefox extensions. Neil Reisner points out a that few computer-assisted reporters might find helpful.
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