Copy. Paste. Legislate.

The winner of the 2020 Goldsmith Prize for Investigative Reporting was “Copy. Paste. Legislate” by the staffs of The Arizona Republic, USA TODAY, and the Center for Public Integrity. The collaborative reporting team conducted unprecedented computer analysis of legislation in all 50 states to reveal 10,000 bills that were copied nearly word-for-word from text written by industry groups, lobbyists and political activists, often to benefit big business at consumers’ expense. Two tools built as part of the project are helping citizens and local reporters track these copycat bills in their own communities.

Read more about the story behind the investigation in this piece by The Journalist’s Resource.

How Medicaid Grew

Smoke Screen, Parts I and II

An year long investigation, Smoke Screen, Parts I and II, shed light on the manipulation of nicotine in cigarettes. The thrust was on how the tobacco industry, through the manufacturing process, is able to control the amount of nicotine in cigarettes.

Lost in America: Our Failed Immigration Policy

Lost in America was a 7-part investigative journalism series published in The Miami Herald that documented and uncovered the then Haitian and Cuban immigrant exodus into Miami and the country’s discriminatory immigration policies. The series exposed cases of illegal detention and mistreatment of the Haitian and Cuban refugees and the differential treatment immigrants from Cuba and Haiti were subjected to viz refugees from other nationalities.