Just when you thought DC’s public housing program couldn’t get much worse, SpotlightDC funded Morgan Baskin’s investigation into a city agency that pays developers handsomely to provide rental units too disgusting for humans but swell for rats. IMPACT: The day after Baskin’s report landed on DCist and WAMU, DC council members vowed to investigate.

Independent journalist Sarah Payne and longtime DC observer and columnist Ken Cummings used a SpotlightDC award to shed new light on DC’s Illegal Gray Market Cannabis Economy.

WRC-TV true crime reporter Paul Wagner benefitted from a SpotlightDC award to create a multi-part investigative podcast reporting on how police tracked down the Potomac River Rapist.

Funded by SpotlightDC, veteran investigative reporter Sloane Airey joined with Washington City Paper columnist Alex Koma to penetrate DC’s Failed Forensic Lab — 

Following its ground-breaking reporting on DC’s Heat Islands, Hola Cultura used a SpotlightDC award to create a multi-part podcast giving voice to DC residents surviving in the District’s hottest communities. Aired August 2022 by WTOP and WAMU.

In hopes of aiding the environment, we separate trash our into bins: garbage and refuse in one; cardboard, newspaper, glass and plastic in another – and we feel better, expecting stuff in one bin destined for reuse, perhaps even wearing shoes one day re-manufactured from our plastic bottles. But an investigation funded by SpotlightDC shows that DC fails to recycle, from collection and separation to monitoring and enforcing rules.

“Funded by Spotlight DC, this four-part investigation of recycling will demonstrate how the District has failed to meet its own stated recycling objectives by sending items sorted by residents for recycling to landfills or incinerators.”

Is the District covering up infant homicides and letting their killers go unpunished? Facts revealed in Jonetta Rose Barras’ four-part investigative series point to failures that allow abuse and murder of vulnerable children.

DC’s poor reside in neighborhoods where temperatures can rise 20 degrees higher than more leafy, elite regions of the District. How much do they suffer in the heat islands?
Hola Cultura, a Latino-focused nonprofit, used maps supported by interviews and research to present a city divided not just by race and income but by climate that can affect health outcomes, education and crime. Its three-part series was published August 2021 by Washington City Paper.

Who Killed Sherry Crandell?
Threading together fresh evidence and interviews with family, detectives and DNA experts, veteran crime reporter Paul Wagner weaves a compelling narrative that drives his 8-part podcast about a nurse found dead in Prince Georges Hospital Center in 1998. WTOP presented Wagner’s podcast with Apple in its American Nightmare; the ninth segment might unveil the killer.

The wheels of justice in DC’s Superior Court nearly ground to a halt during the Covid-19 pandemic, leaving defendants in jail without charges or recourse.
In a four-part series published by Capital Community News and Hill Rag April-June 2021, Gavrielle Jacobovitz investigated and examined how DC’s criminal justice system was adjusting – or failing to adjust – to pressures caused by the pandemic.

Why are sweetheart deals costing DC taxpayers millions in subsidies to big trash haulers?

It required months of digging into documents and FOIA requests for Cuneyt Dil to piece together the narrative of how private trash collectors were reaping millions a year in overpayments by the District’s DPW. Published in July 2020, the investigation showed that it cost the District more to process trash brought in by private haulers than they paid to dispose of it in “tipping fees.” His work forced DPW to raise fees and prompted oversight by the DC council.