For 20 years, an obscure Virginia regulatory board has forced thousands of landowners to lease their mineral rights to private energy corporations.

Daniel Gilbert is a reporter for the Bristol (Va.) Herald Courier.

I was warned prior to IRE and NICAR’s CAR Boot Camp that many attendees leave feeling overwhelmed.

And at the end of the five-day class in Minneapolis in early October, I felt … overwhelmed.

Gregg Hennigan covers local government out of the Iowa City office of The Gazette.

During the 2007 - 2008 Arkansas hunting season, Mark A. Mann, 46, killed a deer in a county southeast of Little Rock. Mann, a resident of North Little Rock, Ark., said he uses a .50-caliber muzzleloader to hunt.

"I hunt as often as I can, until I fill all of my tags," he said.

Normally that's fine, but Mann was convicted in 1989 of felony theft of property and then was convicted in 1994 of another felony: being a felon in possession of a firearm.

Andy Boyle is a senior news-editorial and broadcasting major at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. He previously interned at the Erie Times-News in Erie, Pa., and is graduating in May 2009.

My news organization, Texas Watchdog, found thousands of dead people on our local county's voter rolls and dozens whose names may have been used to cast ballots after their deaths.

We couldn't have conducted the investigation without the IRE and NICAR Boot Camp training in Columbia, Mo.

Lee Ann O'Neal is deputy editor with Texas Watchdog, a nonprofit news site and training center based in Houston.

In March, Oklahoma’s Supreme Court published new rules in a legal publication directing state courts to omit more information from their public records including birth dates, addresses, work history, status as a crime victim and medical and financial details.

The action came after other court records and proceedings were being moved out of public view, including one that involved a state legislator attempting to keep his divorce proceedings closed.

Ginnie Graham is a projects writer at Tulsa World in Tulsa, Okla.

It began with an email while I was on vacation. “Not to distract you,” my boss wrote, “but wanted to pass along that when you get back, you’re going to be taking on a … massive nationwide subprime data crunch.”

Rick Brooks, who attended the March 2007 CAR Boot Camp, is deputy Atlanta bureau chief of The Wall Street Journal. Contact Rick Brooks at rick.brooks@wsj.com.

In February 2007, Milwaukee Magazine published an investigation of financial conflicts of interest by Milwaukee County circuit judges. In a three-year period, four local judges heard more than 200 cases involving companies in which they owned stock, and the state watchdogs never monitored the conflicts.

Geoff Davidian has reported for three decades at newspapers, including The Arizona Republic, Milwaukee Journal and Houston Chronicle. He went online in 1996 with The Putnam Pit. He is an alumnus of the 2006 CAR Boot Camp and the 2007 Statistics Boot Camp.

Politics in Puerto Rico are complicated and intense.

OMAYA SOSA PASCUAL is an investigative and special projects at El Nuevo Día in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Her work has been recognized by Puerto Rico’s press associations and the National Association of Hispanic Journalists. She’s an alumnae of the May 2006 CAR Boot Camp. Contact her at ososa@elnuevodia.com