Robert Benincasa
Robert Benincasa is a computer-assisted reporting producer in NPR's Investigations Unit.
Since joining NPR in 2008, Benincasa has been reporting on NPR Investigations stories, analyzing data for investigations, and developing data visualizations and interactive applications for NPR.org. He has worked on numerous groundbreaking stories, including data-driven investigations of the inequities of federal disaster aid and coal miners' exposures to deadly silica dust.
Prior to NPR, Benincasa served as the database editor for the Gannett News Service Washington Bureau for a decade.
Benincasa's work at NPR has been recognized by many of journalism's top honors. In 2014, he was part of a team that won an Investigative Reporters & Editors Award, and he shared Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Awards with Investigations Unit colleagues in 2016 and 2011.
Also in 2011, he received numerous accolades for his contributions to several investigative stories, including an Edward R. Murrow Award for Excellence in Coverage of Trauma, an Investigative Reporters & Editors Radio Award, the White House News Photographers Association's Eyes of History Award for multimedia innovation, and George Polk and George Foster Peabody awards.
Benincasa served on the faculty of Georgetown University's Master of Professional Studies program in journalism from 2008 to 2016.
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The government's Paycheck Protection Program was intended to help small businesses during the pandemic keep workers on staff. But a lot of the recipients weren't exactly small businesses.
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In the government's hurried pandemic response, more than 250 companies, some with little or no medical supply experience, got contracts worth more than $1 million without fully competitive bidding.
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Car traffic took a big dip beginning in late March, and headlines celebrated clean air around the U.S. But an NPR analysis of EPA data tells a more troubling story.
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On March 13, President Trump promised to mobilize private and public resources to respond to the coronavirus. NPR followed up on each promise and found little action had been taken.
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Coal mining companies linked to billionaire Gov. Jim Justice and his family have agreed to pay the government more than $5 million in delinquent mine safety fines.
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A Labor Department audit found no correlation between the federal system that fines mining companies for unsafe conditions and safety in mining operations.
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In Bound Brook, N.J., developers want to take advantage of a new taxpayer-funded flood control system to attract young professionals, but this could make the town unaffordable for current residents.
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NPR analyzed records from a Federal Emergency Management Agency database of more than 40,000 buyouts and found that most went disproportionately to whiter communities.
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The federal government spends billions of dollars each year helping communities rebuild after disasters and to prevent future damage. But that money isn't always allocated to those who need it most.
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More than 2,000 miners in Appalachia are dying from an advanced stage of black lung. NPR and Frontline have found the government had multiple warnings and opportunities to protect them, but didn't.