Howard Center Projects

Off the Rails (2025)

Exposing risks and regulatory gaps in North America's railroad industry after the damaging 2023 train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio.

Project highlights:

• Unprecedented access to RailState LLC data capturing images of every train moving through much of North America, that helped report information the railroads don’t want to share.
• Edward R. Murrow Award in Investigative Reporting.
• Collaboration with professional and university-based newsrooms, including NPR, CBC and the University of British Columbia’s Global Reporting Centre.

Planes, Trains and Luxury Stays (2024)

Found that despite major reforms, U.S. House representatives and staff have taken at least 17,000 trips since 2012 that were paid for by private parties, many of them with deep ties to lobbyists and special interests.

Project highlights:

• Used artificial intelligence to create an unprecedented database of House travel, finding and mining documents that had been removed from public view. The interactive database is available to the public and newsrooms nationally.
• Nine months spent by Merrill College and Boston University reporters, examining privately funded travel by members of the U.S. House and their staff to show congressional reforms aren’t working.
• POLITICO, AP and the Minnesota Star-Tribune published individual stories from the project.

Lethal Restraint (2024)

A three-year investigation documenting police use of force in collaboration with The Associated Press global investigations team, FRONTLINE (PBS) and the Arizona State University Howard Center.

Project highlights:

• Finalist for the 2025 Pulitzer Prize in Investigative Reporting, the first such honor for journalism produced by Merrill College.
• Documented more than 1,000 deaths from 2012-21 in the U.S. resulting from police tactics intended to stop people without killing them.
• 205 Merrill students, faculty and staff contributed to the project, which includes an interactive database, traditional and dynamic storytelling, and a FRONTLINE documentary. 

Youth Tackle Football (2024)

In collaboration with Merrill College’s Shirley Povich Center for Sports Journalism, the Howard Center published a four-month investigation on how the risks and rewards of youth tackle football are weighed.

Project highlights:

• Students conducted several interviews with dozens of parents, coaches, youth players, medical researchers and former pro football players.
• In-depth national public opinion poll of parents created by the Povich and Howard centers, allowing students to put together a comprehensive illustration of how youth tackle football is viewed today.
• Done in partnership with PBS NewsHour, which aired a segment produced by Merrill College student journalists. The six-story project was also was distributed nationally by The Associated Press and featured on NPR's "All Things Considered."

Gambling on Campus (2023)

College students are in the highest risk group for problem gambling. In collaboration with Merrill College’s Povich Center, the Howard Center published a wide-ranging investigation into universities and sports betting.

Project highlights:

• Showed universities have been slow to create policies, educational programs or restrictions on sports betting, despite the aggressive expansion of sports gambling across the U.S. and abundant advertising at some college campuses.
• Done in collaboration with PBS NewsHour, which aired two segments based on the reporting in the project.

Mega Billions: The great lottery wealth transfer (2022)

Investigation found that state lotteries, increasingly powered by multinational corporations, have become the engine of a multibillion-dollar wealth transfer that relies on spending by less-educated and less-wealthy Black and Hispanic Americans.

Project highlights:

• In-depth look at the lotteries in 45 states and D.C., with nationwide on-the-ground reporting by students.
• First-of-its-kind analysis of mobile-phone location data to prove that the majority of customers at lottery retailers are disproportionately from Black, Hispanic and lower-income neighborhoods.
• Followed the money from the sale of a scratch-off ticket to show who was benefiting from that spending.

Unlevel Playing Fields (2022)

A four-month, in-depth investigation into Title IX and high school sports as the landmark legislation celebrated its 50th anniversary, in collaboration with Merrill College’s Povich Center. Title IX, which passed in 1972, is a federal law that prohibits sex-based discrimination at any school that receives funding from the federal government, including in sports programs. 

Project highlights:

• A national poll of high school parents and their student-athletes to measure awareness of Title IX.
• Nearly two dozen student journalists hunted down documents, combed data and interviewed dozens of principals, coaches, parents and students across the country.
• Investigation found Title IX has fallen short of achieving equity for high school girls in areas such as facilities, equipment, scheduling and publicity, despite the signifiant increase of girls playing scholastic sports. 
• In collaboration with PBS NewsHour, which aired a segment. 

Printing Hate (2021)

From the end of Reconstruction to 1940, newspapers were the most powerful news medium in America. Those run by white supremacist publishers and editors printed headlines and stories that fueled racial hate, inciting massacres and lynchings of Black citizens. Inspired by Associate Professor DeNeen Brown's reporting on the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre.

Project highlights:

• More than 40 stories published on the subject after teaming journalism students from Merrill College, Hampton University, Howard University, Morehouse College, Morgan State University, North Carolina Agricultural & Technical State University and the University of Arkansas.
• Public database that includes historic examples from nearly 70 additional newspapers that featured racist local coverage of lynchings. All of the papers in the database are still published today in some form.

Pushed Too Far (2021)

Investigated the 22 Division I college football player deaths from exertion-related illnesses since 2000. The primary causes of death for these incidents are sudden cardiac arrest, heatstroke and collapse from sickle-cell trait. Found that football programs and coaches face few repercussions from institutions or the NCAA, even when they violate recommended safety precautions that might have prevented death.

Project highlights:

• The first collaboration with Merrill College’s Povich Center. 
• Reported by Professor of the Practice Kevin Blackistone’s Spring 2019 and Spring 2020 Sports Reporting and Writing classes, and master’s student Dan Novak.
• Published by USA Today and by the Howard Center through Capital News Service.

Essential and Exposed (2021)

Showed the Occupational Safety and Health Administration failed to protect essential workers amid the pandemic. Communication among government agencies is muddled, leading to little accountability for the failure of government watchdogs to keep workers safe from COVID-19.

Project highlights:

• Student journalists from Merrill College, the University of Arkansas, Boston University and Stanford University came together to find responsibility for worker safety is splintered among federal OSHA, state agencies and even local boards of health.
• Documented oversight of worker safety in the U.S. rarely results in meaningful consequences for companies that aren’t protecting workers.

Nowhere to Go (2020)

Homelessness plagues every corner of the country, driving political debate from city halls to the White House as elected leaders try to figure out what to do about the half-million Americans living on our streets. The investigation took a nationwide snapshot of how homeless people are being treated in America, particularly those living outside, with nowhere to go.

Project highlights:

• An unprecedented collaboration among seven university journalism programs spanning the country: Merrill College, the University of Oregon, Boston University, Stanford University, the University of Arkansas, the University of Florida and Arizona State University.
• Reporting relied on extensive data collection, including court records for criminal and eviction cases, arrest records, data from public information requests, property ownership documents, 311 calls, and the text of local ordinances that effectively criminalized homelessness. 
• Expanded reporting to evictions, which could include those who could join the ranks of the homeless after the arrival of the coronavirus that could cause millions of people to lose their jobs. Included pieces reported and written by Lecturer Constance Mitchell Ford's class.

Reporting packages:

Election Mail Project (2020)

As voters worried whether a slowed-down U.S. Postal Service could handle a surge of mailed ballots amid the coronavirus pandemic, the Howard Center partnered with USA TODAY to measure mail performance in real time in critical swing states to enact an idea generated by two Merrill faculty members.

Project highlights:

• Packages with GPS units were sent each week. Each unit was about the size of a fun-size Snickers bar and tracked their journey in both Democratic- and Republican-leaning areas in Arizona, Florida, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Nebraska’s 2nd Congressional District.
• Ordinary letters also sent by certified mail since the GPS units made the envelopes heavier than a standard ballot. Bar codes logged each step from a mailbox to a location near an election office.
• Story published by USA TODAY about the first batch of findings on Oct. 2, 2020, and published more findings later in October and November.

Saltwater Invasion (2020)

Saltwater intrusion is an under-the-radar product of the climate crisis. The landward movement of seawater threatens drinking-water supplies, coastal farming and coastal ecosystems. The threat is widespread; roughly 40% of Americans live in coastal counties, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Rising seas, more frequent storms, higher tides, drought and the pressure of pumping for drinking water combine to accelerate the salt invasion. 

Project highlights:

• 100+ interviews done with researchers, planners and coastal residents.
• Soil testing and analyses conducted on well-sample data by the Howard Center.
• Reported by veteran journalist Bill Lambrecht, the Howard Center’s inaugural visiting professional, and Gracie Todd, one of the center's inaugural Howard fellows. 
• Published by The Associated Press and The Baltimore Sun.

Growing Up Behind Bars (2019)

The United States was the only country to condemn minors to life in prison with no chance for parole. In recent years, the Supreme Court has ruled this unconstitutional. Yet more than 2,000 so-called juvenile lifers remain in prison in what the court says is cruel and unusual punishment.

This work is a collaboration between the Howard Center, Capital News Service and PBS NewsHour.

Code Red: Baltimore's Climate Divide (2019)

Urban heat islands vividly illustrate the price humans will pay in the world’s growing climate crisis. With an abundance of concrete and little shade, they get hotter faster and stay hotter longer. Rising temperatures in these neighborhoods will mean more trips to the hospital for heart, kidney and lung ailments. Drugs to treat mental illness and diabetes won’t work as well. Pregnant women will give birth to children with more medical problems.

Solutions exist, the Howard Center and NPR found. But growing more trees, repairing the frayed social fabric of a neighborhood or rebuilding streets and sidewalks to reflect heat are expensive — and take time. For cities like Baltimore, the clock is ticking.

Project highlights:

• Ten weeks spent by UMD reporters and photographers in neighborhoods identified as some of the hottest in Baltimore. 
• Monitored heat and humidity in homes with 80 data-collecting sensors. UMD journalists built these sensors with guidance from UMD’s A. James Clark School of Engineering. Reporters placed one or two sensors in most homes in locations where residents spent significant time.
• More than a dozen separate data sources analyzed, including health records describing inpatient and emergency room hospital visits, detailed temperature data, tree data, and demographic and housing data from the U.S. Census and other sources detailing poverty, income, crime, historical mortgage lending patterns and vacant houses.
• Code Red won six major professional national awards, including a Scripps Howard Award, awards for journalism innovation and a SDX Award for collaboration.