Investigative Journalism

NO BYLINE Fifty years after Lyndon B. Johnson declared a war on poverty, the New York Times looks back to see how some of America’s poorest communities have fared. This article takes a look at McDowell County in Virginia, a county that was so poor that when JFK campaigned there,...

NO BYLINE It was quite a week for Kathleen Sebelius. On April 7, the then U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services visited the CU-Boulder campus to deliver the keynote speech for the 2014 Conference on World Affairs. On March 31, the first enrollment period for the Affordable Care Act...

This week’s big story is – once again – the Affordable Care Act. The first deadline to sign up for the new health care provision was Monday at midnight. During the days – and especially the hours – that led up to that landmark, millions of last-minute insurance shoppers swarmed...

ANALYSIS Slowly but mostly steadily dropping unemployment rates are raising hopes for Democrats in Colorado and the nation that the recovering economy will help them win congressional seats in the 2014 midterm elections. That includes Colorado District 6, which may be the nation’s most hotly contested House race. Scientific models...

President Obama cannot raise the minimum wage without the help of Congress. He has, however, found a way to raise the wages of many low skilled employees by raising the exemption for overtime payment from $23,660 a year to about $50,000 annually. He gave 10 million workers a raise without...

After national unemployment rates slightly rose from 6.6 percent in January to 6.7 percent in February, Bloomberg reports that job openings in the U.S. increased less than expected in January. According to Bloomberg writer Jeanna Smialek, this was likely a sign that “labor-market cooling from late 2013 persisted as severe...

If you talk about inequality in America, and if you want to read about it, The New York Times columnist Paul Krugman and his columns are a safe bet for you. The economics Nobel laureate regularly writes about issues such as unemployment, minimum wage and social mobility – as in...

Many critics of America’s growing inequality argue that income inequality is causing the U.S. to become an oligarchy, in which politicians are bought by the elite. A ProPublica investigation – “Buying your vote: Dark money and Big Data” – is shedding light on money in politics. A recent story from...

More than 1.4 million Americans stopped receiving long-term unemployment insurance checks at the end of last year. Ever since, Congressional Democrats and Republicans fight over a three-month extension for the benefits – so far without success. Just last Thursday, Senate Democrats made a renewed push. But even the “yea” votes...

Lyons, Colo., is a great place to raise a family. It’s a great place to be a musician, an artist or a small business owner, a great place if you like the outdoors. None of its 2,000 residents are there for the same reason, other than that it’s their great...