Archive - Illinois
At Foreclosure Law Firms, Concerns About Novice Attorneys
In Florida, about half of attorneys at the state's four largest foreclosure law firms have practiced law for less than three years, according to the Palm Beach Post.
Funding for Federal and State Financial Regulators Still in Question As Roles Expand
Could Washington's power shift this week have implications for financial reform implementation? Here's a quick review of federal and state regulators' funding situations.
Administration Prepares to Defy Efforts to Limit Obama’s Options for Guantanamo
Senior officials are advising President Obama to reject provisions of a military spending bill that limits his handling of Guantanamo. Aides are urging him to sign the bill but issue a signing statement rejecting the Guantanamo provisions as unacceptable limits on his authority.
The Toppling: How the Media Inflated the Fall of Saddam's Statue in Firdos Square
How saturation media coverage of the toppling of Saddam Hussein's statue in Firdos Square fueled the perception that the war had been won and diverted attention from what in reality was just the start of a long and costly conflict.
Scraping for Journalism: A Guide for Collecting Data
A series of programming and technical guides on how we collected data for Dollars for Docs.
The Coder's Cause in "Dollars for Docs"
Public records, as a programming challenge, in our Dollars for Docs project.
Chapter 3: Turning PDFs to Text
Dollars for Docs Data Guide: A tutorial on several methods to convert PDFs to spreadsheets.
Chapter 2: Reading Data from Flash Sites
How to read data from Flash-based websites, part of our data-scraping guide for Dollars for Docs.
Chapter 1. Using Google Refine to Clean Messy Data
How to use the Google Refine application to make sense of imperfectly recorded data.
Chapter 4: Scraping Data from HTML
Dollars for Docs Data Guide: A tutorial on scraping HTML from websites.
Drywall Woes Continue -- Seeking Redress in Court Could Provide Little Relief
Homeowners affected by problems with defective drywall have been forced to fend for themselves and many have turned to the courts for help. Thousands of lawsuits have been consolidated and are being tried in federal court. But the homeowners’ chances of getting quick relief through private litigation are slim.
Chapter 5: Getting Text Out of an Image-Only PDF
Dollars for Docs Data Guide: A tutorial on converting images of tabular data to actual text for a spreadsheet.
Regulation and Disclosure of Fracking at the Center of Gas Drilling Debate
The use of a mix of water and chemicals, known as hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, has generated controversy and a series of studies, orders and regulations in 2010 from the federal government and a number of states on the topic of gas drilling.
Support ProPublica’s Reporting into the New Year
Before the year comes to an end, please consider making a tax-deductible donation to ProPublica. Your support will help continue our critically important work of publishing investigative journalism in the public interest -- and revealing stories that otherwise wouldn't be told.
The BP Oil Spill Saga: Where Things Stand Now
More than eight months after the start of the worst oil spill in U.S. history, we assess where things stand now with accountability and look back at how the disaster has changed the Gulf and shifted the nation’s regulatory regime.
Where Things Stand: Gulf Oil Spill Claims
One of the central pieces of BP's program to make amends after the Gulf oil spill disaster was a claims system to compensate individuals and businesses that lost money. Although nearly $3 billion has been paid out, there have been chronic delays that have caused frustration and serious economic hardship to claimants.
Led by California, Inspection Backlogs Weaken Dialysis Oversight
An investigation by ProPublica found that some states are failing to meet inspection targets for the nation’s more than 5,000 dialysis clinics. Patient advocates say the backlog increases risks for patients in a system that has one of the industrialized world’s highest mortality rates.
The Year in Wall Street Investigations
This past year prosecutors, regulators, Congress and journalists have spent the year uncovering the financial shenanigans that brought the market to its knees. It's been marked by a few blockbuster settlements and more revealing investigations as well as by some noticeable inaction in the reckoning.
