Jennifer Peebles

MuckRock, the National Freedom of Information Coalition and The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press want to find out what needs and barriers exist in each state to people getting access to public information. Can you help them by taking a few minutes to fill out this survey? I've filled out mine already.

Transparency Alliance Project - Journalist Open Records Access Survey Please help MuckRock, the National Freedom of Information Coalition, the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press and the Brechner Freedom of Information Project create tools, training and knowledge to help you and others in your state obtain government records. For more information about the Tr...

The state of Georgia has inked a record-high settlement with the heirs of a man shot to death by a state trooper following a chase in 2020. New story by my AJC colleague Shaddi Abusaid and me:

Family of man killed by Georgia state trooper gets $6.6M in record deal Andrew “A.J.” Smyrna, a 32-year-old father of two, was killed Jan. 23, 2020, when a trooper opened fire on the convertible he was driving in Atlanta’s Edgewood neighborhood.

Cleveland, Georgia, is a beautiful small town up in the north Georgia mountains that's probably best known as the original home of the Cabbage Patch dolls. But a small Baptist-run college there has been harboring some awful secrets. Here's a story I helped out some with behind the scenes with a small AJC team including Thad Moore, Allie Gross and Uma Bhat.

S*x, faith, denials: A Georgia Baptist college faces a reckoning Former student at Truett McConnell University claims sexual abuse, turns over more than 300 emails — many sexually explicit — that police linked to an administrator.

New story out today by my Atlanta Journal-Constitution colleague Jozsef Papp-Chang and me: Georgia left intellectually challenged men forgotten on death row for decades

How Georgia left intellectually challenged men forgotten on death row for decades Two men on Georgia's death row saw their appeals — started in the 1990s — languish for decades.

A story by my colleague Thad Moore and me concerning the recent shooting at Apalachee High School in Winder, Ga., which killed four people and left nine others wounded.

Apparent aunt of Ga. school shooting suspect called authorities: ‘I’m just worried it was him’ A woman identifying herself as the aunt of Georgia's alleged school shooter frantically called Barrow County authorities saying she was worried her nephew was involved.

Thank you to Katie Moore of the Kansas City Star for including my comments about my recent experience as a press witness to an ex*****on here in Georgia.

Why witnesses could only see part of the process when Missouri executed Brian Dorsey Missouri is one of five states to carry out capital punishment this year. A sixth state, Idaho, called off an ex*****on after the ex*****on team could not set an IV line.

National Sunshine Week was a couple of weeks ago. Here's another collaboration with Charles Minshew. We sent records requests to all of Georgia's 159 counties by email to see how well they would fare at responding. The answer: Even though the law effectively requires it, email is still an uncertain means of getting public records in Georgia.

On answering requests for records by email, some Georgia counties fall short In Georgia, the law says government agencies must accept requests for records or information by email. But do they? The AJC sent a simple records request to all 159 Georgia counties to see how they would respond, in recognition of National Sunshine Week and National Freedom of Information Day.

I'm late in sharing some of my latest work here, so I'll try to push my latest pieces out over the course of this week. Here's a joint effort with my friend and colleague Charles Minshew -- we dug into newly released Census data to find Atlanta had become the nation's 6th-largest metro area.

Atlanta metro area now 6th largest in U.S., Census Bureau estimates Metro Atlanta has leapfrogged both Washington, D.C., and Philadelphia to become the nation’s sixth-largest metropolitan region. While not the fastest-growing metro area in the country, the Atlanta metro had the third-largest total population increase in the country between 2022 and 2023, the Censu...

I got to work a little bit behind the scenes on this story by my colleagues Carrie Teegardin and Danny Robbins (whom FB is not letting me tag right now. I'll see if I can fix that)

Georgia prisoner died after being left for hours in smoke-filled cell A lawsuit against Georgia Department of Corrections results in $5 million settlement after prisoner's death in his cell is ruled a homicide. An examination of Thomas Henry Giles’ death by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, based on court records and other documents, reveals how employees at Augusta...

My friend and colleague Danny Robbins continues to report on the very dangerous situation in Georgia's prisons. I got to help on his latest story. More to come on this topic very soon.

Georgia prisons see unprecedented number of suicides Georgia prisons set a record for inmate suicides in 2022, with 39 men and one woman taking their own lives, an analysis by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution shows. The AJC also found that inmate killings continued at high rates, with 30 homicides in 2022.