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The Investigative Reporting Workshop is a nonprofit, investigative news organization focusing on significant issues of public concern.

The Workshop is an incubator and laboratory for original, nonpartisan watchdog reporting. As a professional journalism center in the School of Communication at American University, the Investigative Reporting Workshop is one of only seven university-based investigative journalism projects in the nation and the only one centered in Washington, D.C. The Workshop mentors and enables the work of a new generation of investigative reporters while also enlarging the public space for the leading journalists of our time.

Long-term projects include the banking and credit union industries, for which the Workshop tracks their troubled-asset ratios; illegal immigration and Obama’s enforcement policies; the telecommunications industry, particularly as it relates to the digital divide between rich and poor; and the Environmental Protection Agency, and its efforts to identify the most potent toxins in the nation.

The Workshop collaborates with other media outlets as publishing partners, and those include the Washington Post, msnbc.com, FRONTLINE, the Philadelphia Inquirer, The National Journal, the Daily Beast, New America Media and McClatchy Newspapers, among others.

Over the past year, the Workshop had about 530,000 unique visitors, and about 700,000 total visits, with a little over 3 million page views, according to Google Analytics. The BankTracker project continues to draw most of our traffic (well over 75 percent).

Founding
The nonprofit was founded by American University professors Charles Lewis, a national investigative journalist for more than 30 years, and Wendell Cochran, a longtime business reporter and editor, in the spring of 2008; the publishing of original content began the spring of 2009. Lewis, a former producer for “60 Minutes,” founded four non-profits in Washington, including the Center for Public Integrity, and has written four books, including “The Buying of the President 2004,” and is a MacArthur Fellow. He is now executive editor. Cochran, a longtime business reporter, editor and journalism faculty member, is the founding senior editor.

Editors
Lynne Perri, former deputy managing editor for graphics and photography at USA TODAY and a former reporter and editor at The Tampa Tribune, is managing editor. Lewis and Cochran are tenured faculty members in the School of Communication at American University; Perri is a journalist-in-residence.

John Sullivan, a Pulitzer Prize winner from The Philadelphia Inquirer, is a senior editor. Sullivan is a reporter on The Washington Post's Investigations team and teaches an investigative practicum at the graduate level. Sullivan spearheaded a new partnership between the Workshop and The Washington Post.

Jennifer LaFleur, former senior editor for Reveal from The Center for Investigative Reporting, is data editor. LaFleur joined the Investigative Reporting Workshop in 2017 and is a data journalist-in-residence at American University. LaFleur teaches data journalism and has won numerous journalism awards, including for her coverage of disability, legal and open government issues.

Kris Higgins is the operating producer. Higgins holds a MFA in Film & Media Arts from the School of Communication at American University and spent more than a decade overseeing grants and programs at various nonprofit organizations.

Nancy Sturm joined the Investigative Reporting Workshop as development director in 2018. Sturm led development departments and programs at various organizations, including the national League of Women Voters, Common Cause and the National Endowment for the Humanities, among others.

Background
The model for the Workshop is the Children's Television Workshop, which originally was created to produce “Sesame Street,” but became an incubator and innovator for much of educational television.

Advisory Board
The Workshop Advisory Board consists of 13 outstanding journalists from five continents.

Notable Work
While 75 percent of the Workshop’s web traffic is on BankTracker, in which people can find the details about every bank and credit union in the country, the Workshop also has produced:

Trump Inc.
The story, At Trump’s big-city hotels, business dropped as his political star rose, internal documents show, by the Workshop's Morgan Krakow and the Post's David A. Fahrenthold and Jonathan O’Connell, is about how business at Trump properties fell as his political ambitions rose. The investigation reveals how bitter some individual owners are at their losses. One of their key findings: “Between 2015 and 2017, revenue from room rentals at the New York hotel declined 14 percent … At Trump’s hotel in Chicago, a document [showed] a similar drop-off. Bookings fell 8 percent from 2015 to 2016, and this year’s figures are still lower than the pace in 2016.”

Collateral Damage
The online and on-air stories, Caught between gun violence and aggressive policing, document the D.C. police department's aggressive focus on getting illegal guns off the streets. The Workshop combined forces with WAMU-FM, the NPR affiliate in Washington.

Investigating Power
The online, multimedia project, Investigating Power showcases more than 50 hours of interviews with distinguished journalists. This project documents “truth to power” moments in contemporary U.S. history and the careers of notable journalists since the 1950s. It is a part of a larger project and book, “The Future of Truth,” by Charles Lewis, the former “60 Minutes” producer.

Flying Cheap and Flying Cheaper
Three programs for FRONTLINE: “[|Flying Cheap],” a documentary about the impact of the major carriers’ reliance on regional airlines and their pilots, which won a Screen Actors Guild Award for writing; a follow-up, “Flying Cheaper,” a follow-up about the impact of outsourcing maintenance on planes; and “Lost in Detention,” a documentary that chronicled the administration’s enforcement policy, which has deported 400,000 people annually the last two years and put thousands in detention centers with legal representation, often splitting up families in which the children are U.S. citizens.

What Went Wrong
An 18-month series, “What Went Wrong: the Betrayal of the American Dream,” by James Steele and Don Barlett of Vanity Fair and formerly of the Philadelphia inquirer, with contributions by Kat Aaron, Michael Lawson and other Workshop staffers. The series documents how 40 years of public policy and Wall Street business practices have conspired against working people. Barlett and Steele's new book, "The Betrayal of the American Dream," (PublicAffairs, 320 pages, $20.96 hardcover) researched with the help of Workshop staff, will be released on July 31, 2012.

Bank Tracker Analysis
In June 2016, the Workshop published an analysis of eight years’ worth of banking data to get a clearer picture of the toll the recession took on every state.

The New Newsroom
Executive Editor Charles Lewis reflects on the unlikely growth of nonprofit journalism worldwide and its profound impact as revelations of government secrets, money-laundering and corruption have been exposed, sometimes by journalists at great personal risk.

Scripps Howard Awards
In March 2012, the Workshop was named a “finalist” in the Business/Economics Reporting category of the Scripps Howard Awards for the project, "What Went Wrong: The Betrayal of the American Dream." The series, spearheaded by Kat Aaron as project editor, with reporters Jim Steele and Don Barlett as well as contributions from the staff, focused on how policies in Washington and on Wall Street have hurt Americans for far longer than the most recent recession.

Society of American Business Editors and Writers (SABEW)
In March 2010, the Workshop's Wendell Cochran, Matt Waite, RIchard Mullins, Lynne Perri and Lisa Hill were recognized for "BankTracker," in the category of "Best in Business Online" for "Creative Use of the Online Medium, small websites, 2009."

Society of Professional Journalists
In 2010, the Workshop, along with FRONTLINE, received a Society of Professional Journalists award in the Television category for its “Flying Cheap: Regional airlines cut cost of flying, at what price?” documentary. The Sigma Delta Chi Awards for Excellence in Journalism recognize distinguished service to the American people and the profession of journalism through outstanding accomplishments.

MacArthur Foundation Grant
In 2016, the Workshop was awarded a $1.5 million, five-year grant for general operating support from the MacArthur Foundation. The Workshop was one of 12 news organizations across the country to receive this award.

iLab Division
Through the center’s iLab division, the Workshop conducts research on and experiments with new models for doing and delivering investigative journalism. iLab’s efforts helped lead to the development of the Investigative News Network and aided the establishment of several other nonprofit news groups.

Through iLab, the Workshop has tracked and published two major reports on the new nonprofit journalism ecosystem, and efforts to uncover what is happening in North Korea with its poor citizens. Lewis has written more than 20 articles about the new nonprofit journalism ecosystem.

In March 2012, the Workshop published another in a series of stories on the digital divide. The project, led by the John Dunbar, the former director of Connected, the Workshop's Media and Broadband Project, looked at states with the most and least broadband subscribership rates. Nationwide, the Workshop survey found that 40 percent of households did not have broadband connection in the home through December 2010.

IRS Filing
The Workshop operates under the 501c3 designation of American University.

Funding
The Investigative Reporting Workshop does not accept corporate or government support, and instead relies on private foundations and public supporters to continue to build upon its work. It has been declared tax-exempt by the Internal Revenue Service, which means donations to the organization are tax-deductible.

Donors
A list of the foundations that have made grants to the Workshop since its inception in May 2008: