That's funny to see this article. I remember an article about it -- also in CJR -- when the original series broke in 2014 [0]. Looks like this article, which is from today, is about other reporters taking it nationwide. Which is great. One of the more confounding things (to me) about journalism is how a great investigation in one state isn't done in another. Not by the reporting team of the first story, but by any journalist in other states, because it's easy "money", in the sense that you have a framework to copy/imitate, and if there was a corrupt system in one state, there's likely to be something similar in all the other 49 states. And it will still be "news" because of how fundamentally different state laws and bureaucracies are. But then again, sometimes newsrooms have a culture of not wanting to be seen as doing something that has been perceived to have been done, even if it was by a non-competitor (e.g. a non-Florida newspaper, in this case)

Seeing investigative efforts replicated nationwide not only makes for 50 unique-in-their-own way stories, that benefit 50 different jurisdictions. You also get bonus meta-stories about states that are severe outliers, when the 50 are compared and contrasted.

[0] http://archives.cjr.org/united_states_project/palm_beach_pos...