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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.

  • A currency template is used to check that security features, such as a watermark of Andrew Jackson's image, are in the right place.
    Where Dollars Are Born
    Robert Benincasa
    A behind-the-scenes tour of the factory where paper for U.S. currency has been made since 1879.
  • Should We Kill The Dollar Bill?
    Robert Benincasa
    Last month, a Washington, D.C. subway station was plastered with posters of giant dollar bills. One of them said: "Tell Congress to stop wasting time trying to eliminate the dollar bill." The $70,000 ad blitz was part of a small lobbying war over the fate of the dollar bill.
  • Millions of dollars have been spent on television ads during this campaign cycle.
    Romney Leads Gingrich In Money; Obama Bests Both
    Peter Overby
    Newt Gingrich had his best fundraising of the campaign in the final months of last year — but so did rival Mitt Romney, whose disclosure reports showed he raised more than twice as much. As for Obama, his campaign showed that incumbency still has its advantages.
  • Dollar coins gathering dust in the Fed's Baltimore brach.
    White House Kills Dollar Coin Program
    Robert Benincasa
    More than 1 billion coins are sitting unwanted in government vaults. Ending the program will save an estimated $50 million a year.
  • Basil Rynestead, 17, sits in the driver's seat of his Toyota pickup truck. New federal government numbers confirm that male drivers are still having twice as many fatal crashes as females. And the boys are more likely than the girls to have been speeding or drinking.
    Teenage Boys More Likely To Be In Fatal Car Crashes
    Robert Benincasa
    The number of teenage drivers involved in fatal car crashes has dropped dramatically in the past decade. But in those wrecks, male drivers still outnumber females by more than 2 to 1. For Basil Rynestead of Fauquier County, Va., it's a battle against peer pressure and inexperience to stay safe on the road.
  • Basil Rynestead, 17, sits in the driver's seat of his Toyota pickup truck. New federal government numbers confirm that male drivers are still having twice as many fatal crashes as females. And the boys are more likely than the girls to have been speeding or drinking.
    Teenage Boys More Likely To Be In Fatal Car Crashes
    Robert Benincasa
    The number of teenage drivers involved in fatal car crashes has dropped dramatically in the past decade. But in those wrecks, male drivers still outnumber females by more than 2 to 1. For Basil Rynestead of Fauquier County, Va., it's a battle against peer pressure and inexperience to stay safe on the road.