Stories of local and national shennanigans

October 20, 2009 12:07 PM

I want to read investigative reports exposing corruption or scandal on a local or national level. Please provide me with links.

Over the past few months, I've become obsessed with investigative and explanatory journalism. I'm currently plowing through the Pulitzer Prize winning stories I can find in each category.

I've read story after story dealing with corruption, shady dealings, abuses of power, etc. and I want more on an ongoing basis. Examples include the FPP post on the Blue I submitted yesterday, the Tampa Tribune's investigation into Scientology, the Seattle Times' look at improper sealing of court records, and the like,

I've been going around to different newspaper websites in an effort to try and build a collection of links to their investigations or special reports sections. Problem is, a lot of these papers have buried these stories deep in the website.

This is where you guys come in. I'd like links to as many magazine and newspaper investigations or special reports you can muster. Ideally, the link will be a repository of such stories (such as this). But, links to individual investigations, blogs that document these sorts of stories, anthologies, books, etc. are also appreciated.

I know we have a few librarians in here, and your expertise would be most appreciated as well.

Thanks to all!

posted by reenum to society & culture (5 comments total)

P.S. The sources don't have to be just U.S. based. I'd love to read international stories in this vein as well.
posted by reenum at 12:07 PM on October 20

Prince of Providence.
posted by quodlibet at 12:29 PM on October 20

NYT/Frontline/CBC investigation of McWane Inc.
posted by djb at 3:09 PM on October 20

4 Corners have a decades-long history of exposing corruption.
posted by polyglot at 9:44 PM on October 20

Two examples for you. You should also read this handy NYT article, which is a great rundown of a whole bunch of different investigative news blogs that have popped up in recent years.

The first is Voice of San Diego, which I personally find ridiculously boring (mind you, that's not my *professional* opinion), but as the first part of their mission statement makes clear ("To consistently deliver ground-breaking investigative journalism for the San Diego region") they are very much what you're looking for. They do small, everyday investigations, but I would also suggest using RSS to keep an eye on their Special Reports page for some of the bigger stuff. It's all about the scandals, swindles, and disasters befalling San Diego.

The other is San Diego Union-Tribune (are you sensing a trend here?). They won a Pulitzer not that long ago for breaking the scandal about the local Congressman (Randy "Duke" Cunningham) being on the take for various companies. It was a huge scandal and he resigned, but the newsroom's been gutted since then so you might not have as much luck as you did then (frankly, I never thought they were much at investigating, but obviously they weren't doing a half bad job at one point). You might want to keep an eye on their 'Watchdog Reports' section for muckraking in the SD area (though they're often scooped by Voice of SD).

There should be any number of examples like these (I can think of several more for the local tv stations, which have watchdog/investigative type units as well) depending on how small scale you're interested in. If it's the big drama, well, you're probably going to have to keep a lot of different places on RSS since thankfully most places aren't all drama all the time.
posted by librarylis at 11:26 PM on October 20