(upbeat music) - The Utah Investigative Journalism Project is a collaborative newsroom nonprofit organization, delivering fair reporting, strengthening local journalism.

And here with more is executive director Eric Peterson.

Hi Eric, thanks so much for being here, well, and for what you do.

So you are the state's only 100% non-profit investigative reporting?

- Yes, that's right, we only focus on investigative reporting.

We feel like maybe it's my bias, but I feel like it's the most important kind of reporting that needs to be done.

But it's also the hardest and it can be challenging to do, it can be expensive to do.

And so we focus on that and we focus on kind of sharing that with other newsrooms as well.

- Yeah, and speaking of that, so what are some of the newsrooms you've shared your reporting with?

- So we've collaborated with almost every print outlet in the state from The Salt Lake Tribune and The Deseret News down to St. George News, Provo Daily Herald.

Mostly been in print, but we've also done broadcasts.

We've been on KUER, we've been... Last year we had a story with Telemundo.

So that was exciting.

That was our first like TV broadcast that we've been able to do.

- Great, great, and I want you to talk about some of your big accomplishments, because you've uncovered a lot.

- Yeah, we've had some really good success, especially around like 2020, 2021.

We launched a pretty major investigation looking into evictions in Utah, and especially looking at how particular state Senator Kirk Cullimore, his family law firm that he was a part of at the time, they involved in doing most of the evictions in the state.

And as a lawmaker, he's also helping to write legislation that affects landlords and renters.

And so we ended up doing about 15 stories that year on that subject alone.

- Well, I know you do a lot and glad you're there.

So thanks for being here.

- Yeah.

- And if you'd like to know more about the work of the Utah Investigative Journalism Project and a webinar that they're going to have coming up on how to use databases to look into state spending, go to Utahinvestigative.org, Utahinvestigative.org.

I'm Mary Dickson, thanks for watching "Contact."

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