The Backstory: Investigations lead to new rules, trials and consumer protections

I'm USA TODAY editor-in-chief Nicole Carroll and this is The Backstory, insights into our biggest stories of the week. If you'd like to get The Backstory in your inbox every week, sign up here.

'What exactly is wrong? Who is responsible? Is it solvable?'

These are the three questions USA TODAY investigative editor Amy Pyle asks reporters who are pitching her a story.

"I'm looking for stories that not only affect people's lives but where there's a tangible change that could occur," she says.

She edited a package this year on seniors losing their homes to reverse mortgages. "With every case," Pyle says, "we knew there was a way that regulations or more company responsibility could lead to better outcomes for people."

She's also proud of the work we did that revealed how discount plastic surgeries led to needless deaths.

"There's simply no reason women should be losing their lives and livelihoods because they wanted to improve their bodies," Pyle says.

That story led to a new law in Florida to protect patients. "It's not our place to tell politicians what to do," she says. "It's certainly our place to shine a light on where they failed."

As year the year winds down, I wanted to share some of the year's most powerful investigations:

We looked for legislation that was written by special interests. We found it in all 50 states.

Copy, Paste, Legislate: USA TODAY, the Arizona Republic and the Center for Public Integrity dedicated more than two years to a massive data collection and reporting effort that revealed how corporations and powerful special interests have seized control of the language that governs America using model legislation. With the equivalent of 150 computers running nonstop for months, we examined more than 1 million bills introduced in statehouses for copycat language and tracked how the powerful few injected their hand-crafted bills into the legislative process, choosing the very words that got debated, and often, got written into law.

We trained more than 100 journalists to use the tracking tool and published stories across the nation revealing the source of local legislative efforts that even lawmakers didn’t know were scripted by corporations and special interest groups.

Hundreds of police officers have been labeled liars. Some still help send people to prison.

Tarnished Brass: USA TODAY worked with more than 20 reporters in newsrooms across the USA TODAY Network to build the most complete database of police misconduct ever created, identifying 85,000 officers who have been cited for misdeeds. We made most of our data available to the public, arming citizens and reporters across the nation with information about troubled officers in their communities.

The series uncovered dozens of police chiefs who got hired despite serious misconduct and showed how officers continue to testify in criminal cases even after they lie or manipulate evidence. The series also has triggered a new trial for a former cop who was accused of raping a child but then got his case delayed by saying he was on the verge of death from heart failure – for 25 years.

Women seeking discount plastic surgery paid with their lives at clinics opened by felons.

Plastic surgery deaths: In surgeries designed to improve people’s appearance, no one is expected to die. But reporters at USA TODAY and the Naples Daily News revealed that a cottage industry of low-cost plastic surgery clinics in Florida were leaving patients – many working-class, minority women – dead at astounding rates.

The series, which also showed how assembly-line surgery centers were hiring questionable doctors and facing few repercussions for their mistakes, led to a law in Florida that will bring new levels of accountability to the industry for the first time.

A security empire deployed guards with violent pasts across the U.S. Some went on to rape, assault or kill.

Show of Force: G4S sells itself as the world's premier security company – a private army of experienced guards ready and able to protect people at a fraction of the cost of police. But reporting by USA TODAY and the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel found that the company’s efforts to penetrate the U.S. market with low-cost protection have repeatedly come at the expense of its own standards.

G4S hired former cops in Arizona who had been caught lying about their relationships with underage girls and hoarding stolen department ammunition. The company armed a 25-year-old in Colorado who had a documented history of mental illness; the man used his G4S-issued gun to shoot his family and himself. G4S also has lost hundreds of guns over the past decade, many of them winding up at crime scenes across the country.

Seniors were sold a risk-free retirement with reverse mortgages. Now they face foreclosure.

Reverse mortgages: For years reverse mortgages have been marketed as a safe way for seniors to extract equity from their homes in retirement. But USA TODAY outlined rampant foreclosures that have hit minority communities especially hard, threatening to leave elderly spouses or their children without their family home.

The series led federal housing officials to change rules that will help prevent spouses from losing their home when their husband or wife dies. The work also was cited in congressional hearings, which led to a draft of legislation that could help 90,000 people on the verge of default by giving them more options to catch up on payments.

Nicole Carroll is the editor-in-chief of USA TODAY. She is a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist, Benjamin C. Bradlee "Editor of the Year” and proud mom of three. Comments? Questions? Reach her at EIC@usatoday.com or follow her on Twitter here. If you'd like to get The Backstory in your inbox every Friday, sign up here.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: The Backstory: Investigations lead to new rules