Type Investigations

New York, New York, June 6, 2022 — Type Investigations is pleased to announce the 2022 Ida B. Wells Fellows. This year’s fellows will report on a range of issues, including domestic homicide prevention, migrant rescue practices, homelessness in the Bay Area, and the impact of agricultural policies on Black farmers.

Late last June, farmers in Walla Walla, Washington, noticed something odd happening to their onions. Walla Walla, an oasis in the middle of the state’s high desert, is bursting with vineyards, wheat fields and acres of the city’s eponymous sweet onions. As temperatures climbed above 100 degrees Fahrenheit, then above 110 degrees, the oversized onions began to burn, pale blisters forming underneath their papery skins. When the temperature reached 116, the onions started cooking, their flesh dissolving into mush.

Near the banks of the North Thompson River in British Columbia, about 400 miles northeast of Vancouver, the Tiny House Warriors village announces itself with a hand-painted sign attached to wooden stakes: “Unceded Secwepemc Territory.” The area is quiet and remote, with tall stands of spruce and cedar forming part of the world’s largest inland temperate rainforest. At the entrance to the village, a pile of logs creates a makeshift barricade. Beyond it, a cluster of five small wood-framed homes sit on trailers, their walls decorated with colorful murals depicting elements of the Secwepemc people’s history and culture.

After decades of decline in overtime pay, the Biden administration is considering action to sharply expand access in a time of high inflation. This is the fourth article of a four-part series examining the 40-year effort by big business and elected officials to deny Americans extra pay for extra work.

After decades of decline in overtime pay, the Biden administration is considering action to sharply expand access in a time of high inflation. This is the third article of a four-part series examining the 40-year effort by big business and elected officials to deny Americans extra pay for extra work.

After decades of decline in overtime pay, the Biden administration is considering action to sharply expand access in a time of high inflation. This is the second article of a four-part series examining the 40-year effort by big business and elected officials to deny Americans extra pay for extra work.

After decades of decline in overtime pay, the Biden administration is considering action to sharply expand access in a time of high inflation. This is the first article of a four-part series examining the 40-year effort by big business and elected officials to deny Americans extra pay for extra work.

Type Investigations reporting fellow Sarah Posner has spent the past several years reporting on the increasing influence of the evangelical Christian right on mainstream politics. In her newest piece, “Overturning Roe Is the Crowning Achievement of Christian Nationalism,” produced in partnership with The Nation, Posner looks at Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito’s leaked draft opinion for Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization and analyzes how the decision will serve the Christian right in their attacks against not just reproductive rights, but other rights as well.

This story was produced as a collaboration between THE CITY, Columbia Journalism Investigations and Type Investigations as part of “MISSING THEM,” THE CITY’s collaborative COVID-19 memorial and accountability journalism project. Do you know a child who has lost a parent or caregiver to COVID-19? Tell us more here.

In this episode of The Backstory, we're speaking to Ida B. Wells fellow Akintunde Ahmad about his article, “What Happened When Oakland Tried To Make Police Pay for Misconduct,” produced in partnership with The Appeal. In his investigation, Akintunde looks back at a program from two decades ago that required the Oakland Police Department to pay some of its own legal costs and how the city failed to enact the change it promised.

On Dec. 3, 1993, Rashidah Grinage’s family of six was reduced to four. Her 21-year-old son, Luke, had gotten engaged that morning, and had recently interviewed for a new job. But when police arrived at her Oakland, California, home seeking to impound Luke’s dog, a gun fight broke out. Luke and his father, Raphael, a double amputee who used a wheelchair, were killed, along with an officer. It wasn’t until five years later that Grinage became aware of an audio cassette tape recorded by one of the officers, revealing that police had failed to follow protocol around de-escalation and resorted to force within minutes of encountering Luke.

For about six months during 2013 and 2014, Feng X. Liu spent multiple nights each week at the New York City studio apartment of an elderly man she was assigned to care for as a home health aide. Overnight, Liu, now 70 years old, was given a small stowaway mattress...

It was early November when Marianna Treviño Wright saw a convoy of National Guard members in Humvees speed past the National Butterfly Center in Mission, Texas. Shortly thereafter, Treviño Wright, the center’s director, began to see soldiers with assault rifles patrolling nearby and along the banks of the Rio Grande.

These stories take time and resources — if you’d like to help, click here to support our End-of-Year Fundraising Drive. For a limited time your donation will be doubled!. This year we produced dozens of stories, reaching millions of people through our collaborations with partners in digital, audio, print, and film. Much of our coverage examined the ongoing fallout of the pandemic, the climate crisis, and last summer’s uprisings against police violence. As we brace ourselves for whatever 2022 may bring, join us in revisiting a few of these 2021 highlights from our investigative newsroom:

In the village of Varituc el Carmen in Guatemala’s highlands, Maria Maura is raising three children without a father. There’s not much time for dwelling on the past, only survival. The military has repeatedly cordoned off their community and placed it under quarantine because of the high rate of Covid-19 infections. Villagers can’t get to the market or to their fields to cultivate crops, which means constant hunger.

As police close in, on a hot day in Mobile, Alabama, a Black woman bashes a police car window to provide cover for her comrades during a protest. After her arrest, she frames her actions as defensive. It was necessary for them to escape because Black people are “killed for less” by police—the very reason she showed up to protest.

At the COP26 global climate summit in Glasgow, Scotland, this month, President Biden vowed to “demonstrate to the world the United States is not only back at the table but hopefully leading by the power of our example.” Yet even as Biden urged world leaders to take action to avert catastrophic warming, a key piece of his approach to the climate crisis was missing: efforts to curb the expansion of fossil fuel production on public lands in the United States.

Last May, Ida B. Wells fellow Irene Romulo published her investigation, “‘Gang Contracts’ in Cicero and Berwyn Schools Raise Concerns About Criminalization of Youth,” produced in partnership with Injustice Watch and the publication she co-founded, Cicero Independiente. In the story, Romulo revealed that over the past seven years, over 100 students in the predominantly Latinx, working-class suburbs of Cicero and Berwyn, Illinois, have signed “gang behavior contracts,” which prohibit them from engaging in what could be considered gang-related behavior and warn they could face escalating disciplinary measures for breaking the agreement. Throughout the article, Romulo links the current use of “gang contracts” to Cicero’s long history of criminalizing youth.

For 15 years, Yvette Dessin spent long work days with her elderly patients, accompanying them on walks, cooking them meals and bathing those who needed that most intimate kind of care. If a patient died, Ms. Dessin and her adult daughter attended the funeral services to pay their respects. Ms....

A few hours before dawn in early May of last year, four police officers were dispatched to an address that they had come to know: the home of Gemma Smith in Cape Coral, Fla. (Her name has been changed because of the sensitivity of the crimes described.) There, they arrested...