By Charles Ornstein and Tracy Weber, senior reporters, ProPublica

In examining the California Board of Registered Nursing, we found widespread problems. Most troubling, perhaps, is that the board took more than three years, on average, to investigate and discipline errant nurses. When we compared the board’s performance to its peers in other large states, we found that several handled the process in a year or less.

By Ron Campbell Orange County Register

Orange County restaurant king John Gantes was a very wealthy man with 110 restaurants. And then, quite suddenly, he was bankrupt. His declared net worth sank from $215 million at the end of 2007 to a negative $374 million in mid-January 2009 – a $600 million reversal of fortune in little more than a year.

Welcome to the new online site for The IRE Journal. Here you will find timely posting of our popular Member News feature, some Web-only content and links to other features. This site will work in sync with the print Journal, now published quarterly. Much of the Web site content will be open to all site visitors to provide a look at what our members and this organization are all about. (Access to the full PDF version of the Journal still requires membership or a subscription).

Social networking tools bolster coverage of young drug informant’s murder

By Julia Luscher Thompson Tallahassee(Fla.) Democrat When 23-year-old confidential informant Rachel Hoffman was murdered in a botched drug sting, her story begged to be told, especially to young readers. But young people aren’t reading the daily Tallahassee Democrat as often as they once did, so we had to find a way to bring the story to them. Enter Facebook and Twitter.