Our Impact

InvestigateWest has established itself as a potent force in local investigative journalism, spurring reforms, shaping public debate and holding powerful institutions accountable across the Pacific Northwest.

• Our reporting has directly sparked more than a dozen new state laws in Washington, Oregon and Idaho — including one in 2025 and three in 2024 — and helped shape numerous other pieces of legislation. (See “State Laws” below.)

• Our work has prompted federal investigations, been cited in national congressional investigations and drove change inside federal agencies like the EPA. (See “Federal Action.”)

• We have inspired state attorneys general to get involved in problems we have examined. (See “Attorneys General.”)

• We have called out racial bias and equity issues and exposed the failures of government and institutions to protect vulnerable populations. (See “Equity.”)

• Our work has driven change in many other ways — prompting state audits and policy reforms, pushing leaders to resign and empowering people with critical data about their own communities. (See “More Impacts.”)

As the Columbia Journalism Review says: “InvestigateWest’s impact consistently belies its size.”

State Laws

Youth
Our investigation into troubled teen programs in Idaho uncovered years of unchecked child abuse and neglect. Three months after the reporting, Cornerstone Cottage, a youth home where InvestigateWest found that a girl had been raped by a staffer, closed down. During the 2024 legislative session, lawmakers commissioned a watchdog investigation that will examine oversight of Idaho’s youth treatment homes, citing InvestigateWest’s reporting. The Legislature also passed two new state laws meant to boost regulation and oversight.

Human Trafficking
InvestigateWest has led coverage of sex trafficking in the Northwest. After our reporting exposed how a Washington law meant to provide child victims “safe harbor” was failing, state lawmakers vowed to fix it, and they followed through by passing a law in March 2024 devoting $694,000 toward two receiving centers for child sex trafficking victims. The bill also changed definitions associated with trafficking crimes in order to increase prosecutions, a move that came months after our reporting revealed a shocking lack of convictions against traffickers.

Foster Care
InvestigateWest's investigative reporting on Washington's foster care system exposed critical failures and the challenges facing foster children and families. As a direct result of this coverage, the Washington Legislature passed six new laws in 2017 and allocated $48 million in funding to improve foster care services. The reporting not only raised public awareness but also created a sense of urgency among lawmakers, leading to reforms that better protect the state's most vulnerable children. ​​Former state Rep. Ruth Kagi credited InvestigateWest for making it all possible: “Your reporting really made people aware of the problems, and created a sense of urgency. Those articles — it was amazing — the whole issue came into its own because of the reporting you did.”

Health Hazards
InvestigateWest's in-depth reporting on the health hazards faced by health care workers handling toxic chemotherapy drugs led to significant policy changes in Washington state. Our 2010 investigation prompted the passage of two new state laws: one mandating safer handling procedures for toxic drugs and another creating an occupational cancer registry to track cancer risks among health care workers. This work, initially published in 2010, not only raised awareness of the dangers posed to frontline medical staff but also set a precedent for worker safety regulations in health care settings nationwide.

Pollution
Our groundbreaking investigation into the dangers of toxic asphalt sealants, which contain cancer-causing industrial waste, led Washington to become the first state in the nation to ban their use. This 2010 reporting, published in collaboration with NBC News, raised awareness about the health and environmental risks of coal-tar-based sealants, prompting Minnesota and dozens of communities across nine states to follow suit with similar bans. InvestigateWest’s work highlighted the availability of safer alternatives and significantly advanced public safety and environmental protections.

Sexual Abuse
Our exclusive investigation in 2022 exposed how Jehovah’s Witnesses had covered up sexual abuse in Washington state for decades. Notably, the state’s laws pertaining to reporting child abuse — one of the weakest in the country when it comes to clergy — had made it easier for these allegations to stay hidden. Lawmakers took up the issue, and in the next legislative session, before the state Senate approved the bill, Sen. Noel Frame stood and said: “This legislation, I want to acknowledge, is a direct result of incredible investigative reporting by InvestigateWest that uncovered decades of child abuse being covered up by a particular faith community in Washington state.” The legislation stalled the first two times that Frame introduced it, but on May 2, 2025, the governor signed the reform bill into law.

Criminal Justice
Our “Unequal Justice” project in 2017, based on an unprecedented study of 10 years’ worth of racial and ethnic data in Oregon criminal justice records, was cited by national media examining reforms of the state’s criminal-justice system. Upon hearing the findings, the state’s attorney general at the time, who was leading legislative reforms on police profiling, called it “embarrassing” that reporters were first to analyze the state’s data. The reforms enacted later, which came at the end of a yearslong lobbying campaign by many social-justice activists and others, include mandatory collection of data by police who stop citizens for whatever reason, which is aimed at minimizing instances of profiling by race.

Federal Action

Environmental Justice
Our investigation into the EPA’s cozy relationship with a mining company in Butte, Montana, revealed how regulators and industry coordinated to downplay the public health risks of ongoing mining operations. The 2023 reporting led to immediate action, including renewed transparency from the EPA and increased funding from the mining company to study the health impacts of the mine, ensuring greater accountability and attention to the health and safety of local communities.

Climate Change
A 2020 investigation, co-published with The Atlantic, uncovered how the Trump administration had buried a federally funded study critical to advancing the U.S. electric grid, which had implications for national climate policy. Our reporting prompted the chair of the House Science Committee to formally demand answers from the Trump administration. The committee also pushed a provision in a House-passed energy bill requiring disclosure of the findings of the study within 30 days. Weeks later, the report was made public, ensuring that critical information about climate action was no longer hidden from the American people.

Fraud Investigation
Federal authorities launched an investigation of an influential Idaho nonprofit accused of exploiting human trafficking victims in a Medicaid fraud scheme within days of InvestigateWest’s report in July 2024. The probe from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office of Inspector General is ongoing.

Attorneys General

Corporate Responsibility
Washington Attorney General Bob Ferguson sued the nation’s largest for-profit thrift store, Value Village, citing the consumer-protection issues InvestigateWest spotlighted after reporting on these issues for more than a year. Our 2015 “Profiting From Thrift” series reported that the marketing pitches of the company were routinely misleading consumers and donors to Value Village and its affiliated stores, including Savers, Inc., about the proportion of proceeds from the stores going to charity. The AG’s office pursued the case for years, and the issue ultimately landed in front of the state Supreme Court, which ruled in 2023 that the AG’s claims against the company infringed upon its First Amendment rights.

MMIP
Washington State Attorney General’s Office began working with local police in spring 2024 to investigate the disappearance of Indigenous teen Kit Nelson-Mora. Not long before, InvestigateWest had probed Kit’s case and revealed it had taken more than a year for the authorities to look into Kit’s disappearance. Kit’s is one of the first cases that the Attorney General’s Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and People (MMIWP) Cold Case Unit is taking on.

Nonprofit Investigation
Idaho Attorney General Raúl Labrador’s office said in July 2024 that it is assisting federal regulators who are investigating an influential Idaho nonprofit accused of exploiting human trafficking victims in a Medicaid fraud scheme. This came within days of InvestigateWest’s “Savior Complex” series examining the nonprofit.

Equity

Voting and Democracy
Our reporting has shed light on the disproportionate rejection of ballots from younger voters and voters of color in Washington state, leading to significant legal action. This includes lawsuits from the UCLA Voting Rights Project and a prominent elections attorney, aimed at addressing these systemic issues. In 2023, after years of litigation, three Washington counties settled with the Voting Rights Project, under an agreement that requires them to hold semiannual signature-verification training for county election staff and volunteers, as well as cultural competency training.

Criminal Justice
Our "Driving While Indian" investigation exposed how the Washington State Patrol disproportionately searched vehicles of Native American drivers and other people of color. The 2019 reporting prompted state action, an academic study and reforms aimed at reducing racial profiling and ensuring fairer treatment by law enforcement, highlighting the systemic biases affecting marginalized communities in Washington.

Sexual Assault
Our stories dissecting Reed College’s failed system for bringing sexual-assault predators to justice led in 2011 to the end of its once-secret system of prosecuting sexual assaults through a college Honor Code system. The work was a key part of an award-winning collaboration with the Center for Public Integrity and NPR.

Immigration
On the eve of publication of our 2012 investigative series, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement initiated negotiations with Tacoma safety officials to draft a safety plan for detainees and employees at Northwest Detention Center, a requirement ignored for nearly a decade. Three immigrants featured in the series who were facing deportation had their expulsions delayed or were given extra time to stay in the country while their immigration cases were reviewed.

More Impacts

A few other recent examples:

Washington

• Telehealth business closes after InvestigateWest report details alleged wage theft
• Reforms coming to WA elections after three counties settle with the UCLA’s Voting Rights Project
• WA state wants school districts to keep better track of truant students
• Leadership shake-up at Seattle-area school district rocked by a sex abuse scandal
• WA state lawmakers eye special education reforms to address students being shipped out of state
• State reaches settlement in lawsuit over foster kids being put in hotels, sent out of state
• WA lawmakers propose bill requiring clergy to report child abuse, citing InvestigateWest reporting

Oregon

• A new state report confirms what InvestigateWest reported last year: Oregon is falling short of its mission to protect workers or recoup stolen wages.
• Audit of Oregon early learning department highlights ongoing need for equity training, oversight
• Providence’s medically fragile children’s center will offer respite care to first child amid leadership shakeup, staff concerns
• Oregon Secretary of State probing staff complaints about racism, mismanagement at early learning department

Idaho

• Following InvestigateWest report, Idaho approves funding for teen’s long-awaited care — but now there’s nowhere for him to go
• Idaho House puts bill to redefine ‘terrorism’ on ice
• Idaho Freedom Foundation President Wayne Hoffman replaced, controversy over his alt-right contractor lingers
• Idaho youth treatment home exposed in InvestigateWest investigation closes down