Return On Investment = $80,000 for 18 Investigative Projects
ROI: Your generosity since 2020 has allowed SpotlightDC to fund 18 investigative and explanatory projects with more than $80,000 in awards to reporters uncovering contract steering, government misspending, coverups of child deaths in DC care, homicide investigations, environmental journalism and police overpay across print, digital, radio and podcasting.
2022:
- Un-Recycled: Five-part investigation of DC’s trash system showed that while DC residents diligently separate refuse for recycling, nearly 90% of recycling in some cases winds up in the dump: https://www.hillrag.com/2022/06/06/trashed-the-challenges-of-apartment-recycling/
- DC’s Illegal Gray Market Cannabis Economy: https://www.hillrag.com/2022/09/02/the-wild-west-of-unregulated-of-cannabis-retailers/
- Potomac River Rapist: https://dmvdownload.wtop.com/podcast-how-dna-brought-the-potomac-river-rapist-cold-case-to-trial/
- DC’s Failed Forensic Lab – How federal prosecutors scuttled the DC lab. https://washingtoncitypaper.com/article/573597/making-a-meltdown-what-role-did-federal-prosecutors-play-in-unraveling-d-c-s-crime-lab/
- DC’s Heat Islands: Hola Cultura’s multi-part podcast giving voice to DC residents surviving in the District’s hottest communities. August 2022 by WTOP and WAMU.
2021:
- Pandemic Injustice: How DC’s criminal justice system kept defendants behind bars without charges or indictments: https://www.hillrag.com/2021/05/03/defendants-stranded-in-jail-by-pandemic/
- DC’s Heat Islands: Mapping the District’s hottest neighborhoods and their effect on residents’ health: https://washingtoncitypaper.com/article/528645/temperatures-in-d-c-s-heat-islands-can-register-ten-to-twenty-degrees-hotter-than-in-leafy-neighborhoods/
- Murder In A Safe Place: Revealed how Prince Georges County detectives used cutting edge DNA technology to track down the killer of a nurse in 1998 : https://spotlightdc.org/murder-in-a-safe-place/
- STILL BROKEN: DC child welfare agencies covering up deaths of children in the District’s care, as part of a six-part investigation of child welfare in DCLine: https://thedcline.org/2021/12/21/still-broken-dcs-child-welfare-system/
2020:
- Waste Mismanagement: How DC taxpayers are subsidizing major private trash haulers with millions in padded fees: https://washingtoncitypaper.com/article/303753/waste-mismanagement-how-the-district-loses-millions-on-garbage-disposal/
- Fraud in DC’s eviction system: Winner of the Institute for Nonprofit News Investigative Story of the Year: https://bit.ly/3e6QE1n. Published Monday and the DC Council closed the loophole in emergency legislation Tuesday.
- Discrimination against DC employees seeking workers compensation: driving DC Council oversight hearings and provoking reform: https://washingtoncitypaper.com/article/415407/workers-compensation-in-d-c-separate-and-unequal/