The Scoop

Paula Lavigne of the Dallas Morning News used federal records to show that “the United States Department of Agriculture does not know how often organic rules are broken and has not consistently taken action when potential violations were pointed out. … Problems continue to crop up, but there’s no way for the public to [...]

Frank Phillips and Brian C. Mooney of the Boston Globe obtained state records showing that “the taxpayer cost of providing State Police security for Governor Mitt Romney’s out-of-state trips increased by more than 60 percent in the last year, as he tested the waters for a run for president.” The price of having state troopers [...]

Paul Jacobs of the San Jose Mercury News spent six months digging into the financial ties between researchers at Stanford and commercial firms, finding that “potential conflicts occur throughout the school’s ranks. More than a third of the school’s administrators, department heads and other leaders — at least 26 out of 67 reviewed by the [...]

Sharon Coolidge of the Cincinnati Enquirer spent two years obtaining city health records on lead poisoning, finding that “hundreds of homes are contaminated by poisonous lead paint in Cincinnati and the city’s Health Department is not forcing property owners to fix the problems.” City officials are much more likely to go after litterers than to [...]

Larry O’Connor of the Jackson Citizen-Patriot in Michigan used local records to find that consumers lodged 114 complaints about local restaurants since October 2004. “During that period, not one restaurant was closed. That hasn’t happened for three years. Inspectors checking into undercooked food, questionable food handling and cockroaches in meals spoke to restaurant managers — [...]