In a new story with DataJournalism.com, reporters Dillon Bergin and Betsy Ladyzhets shared how MuckRock collaborates with both experts and other reporters to pursue major data journalism projects.

In the late 1980s, an area of the Jurupa Valley in Riverside, California began a transformation that would turn it from a community of sprawling dairy farms to hub for enormous warehouses. David Danelski, then an investigative reporter for the Riverside-Press Enterprise, unraveled the details through public records on town planning and found one important document missing from projects approved by county officials for more than a decade: the environmental impact statement. Here are his tips on this and other key records requests you can file.

Freelance journalist Monica Vaughan was reporting on air pollution in California’s San Joaquin Valley when the words of one mother changed her perspective. “I just scan the stories looking for the sentence about whether or not it’s safe to live here. And I can never find that,” Vaughan remembered the woman saying.

In a second guide on air pollution, we bring together advice from reporters like Vaughan and examples that might help you uncover unsafe air in your community. From intial complaints to sustained violations, we give you the tools to ask your local government how it regulates polluters in your area

In 2004, Dina Cappiello discovered some Houston residents were exposed to cancer-causing toxins at a level 20 times higher than federal guidelines — for toxic waste dumps. “Everybody was like ‘nothing to see here,’ but I was like something doesn’t add up,” Cappiello said. In this guide, we share tips and examples from Cappiello and other reporters of what you can request in your community to understand how dangerous the air is and even pinpoint potential polluters.

MuckRock has won the First Amendment Coalition’s Free Speech and Open Government Award for its data journalism collaborations and was named a finalist for the National Institute for Health Care Management Awards and Sigma Awards.

At the American Geophysical Union conference this week, MuckRock and The California Newsroom presented findings and methodology from the “Smoked Screened” investigation.

Dozens of states and the EPA are so concerned they may exclude the smokiest days from the legally binding score cards that determine whether they’re doing enough to fight pollution, according to a joint collaboration between the Tribune and the nonprofit news site MuckRock. Now some states are considering banding together in a joint effort that could trigger the largest exclusion in the history of the federal Clean Air Act

Everyone agrees it’s time to change the Clean Air act’s exceptional events rule, but has different solutions.

MuckRock and its partners have investigated neighborhood-level air pollution, unexplained pollution spikes, and smoky air on the Fourth of July using Microsoft’s Project Eclipse data. But after two years of offering a view of Chicago’s air pollution that residents had never before seen, the project has ended with little details on what comes next.

MuckRock and the Cicero Independiente are also looking for volunteers who are interested in having a free air quality sensor installed outside their home or business. Fill out the form in the article for more information.

Nearly two years after the tech company Microsoft installed more than 100 air quality sensors atop bus shelters across Chicago, a MuckRock analysis of the data documents the neighborhood-by-neighborhood hotspots and disparities — and raises questions about how air pollution continues to affect the city’s fenceline communities.

In the late 1980s, an area of the Jurupa Valley in Riverside, California began a transformation that would turn it from a community of sprawling dairy farms to hub for enormous warehouses. David Danelski, then an investigative reporter for the Riverside-Press Enterprise, unraveled the details through public records on town planning and found one important document missing from projects approved by county officials for more than a decade: the environmental impact statement. Here are his tips on this and other key records requests you can file.

A case in Cape Girardeau County, where the coroner is charged with stealing from the dead and lying on death certificates, is spurring action to strengthen qualifications for public officials who handle deaths.

With the help of maternal mortality experts, MuckRock is releasing a first-of-its-kind dataset that includes nationwide and a selection of statewide data on maternal deaths during the pandemic. We’re also asking for people who have experienced the death of a family member or friend from pregnancy-related complications to tell us their stories.

Unspecific, unknown deaths rose 10 times more among Black, Hispanic and Indigenous people than among white Americans during the COVID-19 pandemic, according to a new analysis by MuckRock. The true toll of the COVID-19 pandemic on many communities of color is worse than previously known.

In a first-of-its-kind analysis, we have detailed death certificate records in Chicago; California’s Bay Area, Los Angeles and San Diego; Minnesota; and New Mexico, allowing us to search for words associated with Long COVID. Here’s what we found.

An investigation by MuckRock and The Missouri Independent found that despite hundreds of millions in federal pandemic relief money pouring into the state, child care facilities are facing huge staffing shortages and parents are struggling with long waitlists for care.

MuckRock and The Missouri Independent analyzed the supply and demand of Missouri child care programs since 2019, drawing from public records and data provided by the advocacy group Child Care Aware.

A new Michigan initiative, Our Strong Start, pairs child care entrepreneurs with a staffer from the state licensing agency who helps with paperwork and obtaining inspections. The program seeks to address problems raised in MuckRock’s “Disappearing Day Care” investigation, which found that Michigan’s child care supply is even more limited than experts thought.

We received more than 170 stories from parents and providers about Michigan’s child care crisis, many of which included detailed policy proposals. Here are seven of those ideas.

How lucrative is the swamp? A first-of-its-kind analysis shows 77 officials who served under Obama and Biden boosted their assets by an estimated 270% from 2017 to 2021.

MuckRock has won the First Amendment Coalition’s Free Speech and Open Government Award for its data journalism collaborations and was named a finalist for the National Institute for Health Care Management Awards and Sigma Awards.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is drilling through basement floors in the Cades Cove subdivision of Florissant to determine whether there is radioactive contamination under residents’ homes.

‘There could potentially be some areas surrounding those known areas where there could still be contamination that is yet to be identified,’ says the bill’s sponsor.

The United States should not expand nuclear energy use, at least until the federal government can make up for the harms caused by previous nuclear projects, U.S. Rep. Cori Bush of Missouri said at a congressional hearing in Washington, D.C., on Thursday.

See what you might have missed from this year’s NICAR conference.

The special election to fill the congressional seat of disgraced and expelled former U.S. Rep. George Santos (R-N.Y.) is on Tuesday, with New York state legislator and “rising star” Mazi Melesa Pilip, an Ethiopian-born Israeli émigré, competing against an establishment Democrat, former U.S. Rep. Tom Suozzi.

The congressional campaign of TV executive Margarita Wilkinson in California’s 49th District, despite being a political novice and never having held elected office, is a case study in what major political parties are looking for, above all else, in a hyper-politicized 2024 campaign season, experts say: Wealth and a blank political slate.

With its new elections project, MuckRock is providing training and support for journalists and the public to explore political races and candidates.