The Yale Investigative Reporting Lab aims to enhance the power of collaborative public-interest journalism. Rooted in the idea that accountability-centered reporting is critical to a thriving democracy, we seek to deepen coverage of criminal justice, climate change, migration, mental health, and other themes, through experimentation with team-driven methods, pursuit of public records, new forms of multimedia storytelling, and more.
Case Study
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Featured Work
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These three pieces by English 480 students explore, in very different ways, the moral and mental-health challenges posed by the climate crisis.
A Mental Health Crisis is Burning Across the American West
By Jacob Stern ‘19
Fire, Fire Everywhere
By Nancy Walecki ‘21
How Far Would You Go To Stop Climate Change?
By Jack McCordick ‘22
This documentary, published by The New Yorker, traces the history of a Louisiana law that explicitly targets the LGBTQ+ community, and follows a group of Black trans women who are fighting for its repeal.
CANS Can’t Stand: Liberation for Black Trans Women
By Matt Nadel ‘21 and Megan Plotka
Five states have recently passed laws allowing prosecutors to look back at old cases and reduce sentences they believe to be extreme. But for these resentencing laws to facilitate meaningful decarceration, prosecutors outside liberal cities have to use them. This piece investigates the early progress of resentencing and explores the practical and ideological concerns that hold back some prosecutors.
Prosecutors in These States Can Review Sentences They Deem Extreme. Few Do.
By Matt Nadel ‘21 and Charlie Lee ‘20
A growing group of laborers is trailing hurricanes and wildfires the way farmworkers follow crops, contracting for big disaster-recovery firms, and facing exploitation, injury, and death. The Yale Investigative Reporting Lab created an original database to document this little-known toll of the climate crisis, and to hold disaster-recovery firms and the government to account for workers’ safety.
The Migrant Workers Who Follow Climate Disasters
By Sarah Stillman
By Elena DeBre ‘23
Published in Mississippi Today and Mississippi Center for Investigative Reporting
By Thomas Birmingham ‘23
Published in The Appeal
By Ko Lyn Cheang ‘21
Published in The New Haven Independent
By Teigist Taye ‘22
Published in The Yale Daily News
By Laura Glesby ‘21
Published in The New Haven Independent
By Keerthana Annamaneni ‘20
Published in The New Journal
By Ram Vishwanathan ‘21
Published in The New Haven Independent
By Matt Nadel ‘21 and Charlie Lee ‘20
Published in The Marshall Project and The Times-Picayune
122 Immigrants Face the U.S. Death Penalty. Only 2 of Those Sentences Honor International Law.
By Matt Nadel ‘21
Published in The Boston Review
By Tyler Jager ‘22
Published in The New Journal
The Migrant Workers Who Follow Climate Disasters
By Sarah Stillman
Published in The New Yorker
By Jacob Stern ‘19
Published in The Atlantic
By Nancy Walecki ‘21
Published in Cosmopolitan
By Jack McCordick ‘22
Published in In These Times