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 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.

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.

A proposed expansion of the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act Program could add thousands of new claimants and cost hundreds of millions in taxpayer funds.

The St. Louis region has struggled for decades with contamination left over from the effort to develop the atomic bomb in the 1940s.

U.S. Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm visited a contaminated site in St. Charles County, saying: “There is no doubt that we have to clean up these sites and there’s no doubt that the testing and remediation is ongoing now…We’ve got to make sure that people feel safe.”

Private companies and the federal government for decades failed to take actions to protect St. Louis residents from nuclear waste, an investigation by The Missouri Independent, MuckRock and The Associated Press finds.