Special Reports
Reporter Vicky Diaz-Camacho Awarded Higher Education Media Fellowship
Vicky Diaz-Camacho, reporter, host and engagement editor, is among 13 journalists named in a national Higher Education Fellowship.
1 year after GED changes: Kansas students lost in shuffle
The number of people who passed the GED exam in Kansas last year is the lowest it’s been in decades. And adult education centers, which for years have helped ensure that students are ready for the test, have been cut out of the process.
A beef over politics
NEMAHA COUNTY, Kan. – From their small farms set in the rolling hills of northeast Kansas, two ranchers are raising a few cattle, and a lot of Cain. David Pfrang and Jim Dobbins turned themselves into activists, launched a shadow corporation, got hauled into federal court and had to hire a lawyer. All over $1….
Cold case: Who is the mystery man of KC’s Runway 1?
Skeletal remains found by a construction worker last summer at Wheeler Downtown Airport opened up one of Kansas City’s oldest unsolved mysteries. The Hale Center for Journalism’s Mike McGraw found that the more he investigates, the more unanswered questions emerge. Could authorities do more to unravel the mystery? It appears they may be poised to…
Kansas City-area supporters strive to reopen eating disorder clinic
Approximately 30 million Americans – two-thirds of them women – battle a clinically significant eating disorder during their lifetime, and hundreds of thousands of these people live in Missouri or Kansas,
Meat labeling advances in Canada, stalls in US
Canadian food safety officials have outpaced their U.S. counterparts in requiring meat companies to label meat that is potentially hazardous to consumers. It’s called mechanically tenderized beef, and it has caused illnesses in the U.S., Canada and elsewhere. And in most cases, consumers, restaurants and grocery stores had no idea they were buying it, because…
‘Chicken rule’ reaction
A Sept. 6 investigation of the USDA’s meat inspection division by the Hale Center for Journalism prompted a record number of hits on the station’s website, a political cartoon and editorial in The Kansas City Star and numerous comments and tweets. [View the story “Commentary on meat inspection story from the Hale Center for Journalism” on…
How the USDA’s new ‘chicken rule’ could change what you eat, and how it’s inspected
In one of the most far reaching changes in U.S. meat inspection history, federal regulators this fall will allow poultry plant employees — instead of USDA inspectors — to help determine whether chicken is contaminated or safe to eat, a move critics fear could spread to beef and pork processing plants. Indeed, a severe shortage…