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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A recent government report called the mine safety standard regulating deadly silica dust "out of date," and difficult to enforce. The Biden administration may finally change that standard. -
Most of the largest civil settlements for police killings were in liberal areas in the year after the Ferguson unrest. Now, lawyers say current protests are hardening political divisions on policing. -
Congress Is Investigating Contracts Tied To Mask And PPE ShortagesSeven multi-million-dollar contracts are at the center of a House subcommittee probe. Investigators say the companies lacked experience and some had political connections to the Trump administration.
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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. -
The small business sectors that received the largest share of federal loans from the coronavirus relief package known as PPP include restaurants, doctors' offices, car dealerships and law firms. -
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. -
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. -
Faced with lost revenue from canceled elective procedures, hospitals laid off 1.4 million health care workers in April, including nearly 135,000 from hospitals. -
In an analysis of 78 nursing homes in New York where six or more residents have died from COVID-19, NPR found nursing homes with more people of color were more likely to have more deaths. -
Many businesses have struggled to get any money from the Paycheck Protection Program. But a company owned by a prominent Chicago family received a $5.5 million loan.
