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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At the Pittsburgh Sword Fighters club, members are asked to leave their politics at the door, a rule that has led to closer relationships and more learning from one another. -
A Bastrop, Texas, man was working in a trench when it collapsed. He died a week later.
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An NPR investigation finds thousands of veterans were pushed into high-cost mortgages by a program that was meant to help them. A rescue plan being rolled out by the Department of Veterans Affairs is excluding many vets who need help. -
NPR looks at grocery inflation and politics in Pittsburgh, a focus of both major presidential campaigns in their quest to woo voters in must-win Pennsylvania. -
More than 250 people have died since 2013 when trenches they were working in caved in. In most cases, the employers failed to follow basic government regulations for making trenches safe. -
A joint investigation by NPR, Texas Public Radio and the program 1A finds that more than 250 workers have died in trench cave-ins over the last decade. Deaths that were preventable, experts say.
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An NPR investigation finds that many people with VA loans who got a COVID forbearance are at risk of losing their homes. The VA has a fix, but it could be too late unless it halts foreclosures. -
Miners and their advocates testify in favor of new silica regulations aimed at preventing black lung disease -
At a hearing miners asked regulators to crack down on silica dust which causes lung cancer. They want rules to require more air monitoring and contain specifics about citations and fines.
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The Labor Department has proposed a new rule limiting miners' exposure to silica — a toxic dust linked to a recent epidemic of severe black lung disease among coal miners.
