John Tedesco

New documents offer more information about the retaining wall that collapsed at the Hills of Rivermist, a neighborhood in San Antonio built by Centex Homes. Comparing the wall’s engineering plans to a memo describing how the wall was actually built shows the retaining wall might have lacked crucial features:

The memo was posted on a city Web page set up to provide daily updates about Rivermist. The city posts new information at the end of every business day.

Crazy? Or sheer genius?

What exactly is an investigative journalist?

Is a journalist someone who does the tedious work of digging through records, analyzing data, and finding good human sources to ferret out the truth?

Or is a journalist someone who dresses up like a pimp, straps on a hidden camera, and tricks workers at ACORN to say really dumb things?

Filmmaker James O’Keefe went the easy pimp route. Last summer, O’Keefe shamed ACORN workers in an undercover video, and O’Keefe’s conservative supporters praised his tactics as real shoe-leather reporting that has been neglected by the mainstream media.

But investigative journalism is not a publicity stunt. It’s not a gimmick. It’s actually tedious, time-consuming work. And more people are beginning to understand that — thanks to one of O’Keefe’s recent stunts.

O’Keefe and his pals were recently arrested for dressing like phone repairmen and infiltrating the office of Sen. Mary Landrieu in a federal building. After the arrest, even conservatives started raising questions about O’Keefe’s methods. John Hood at National Review Online put it this way:

Whatever you think of these kinds of publicity stunts, they do not constitute investigative journalism. The earlier ACORN videos weren’t pieces of investigative journalism, either. It does the growing ranks of investigative journalists at conservative organizations a great disservice to invite a comparison of such publicity stunts with the hard, meticulous, and often boring work of exposing government waste and corruption.

The New York Times published a Sunday story pointing out O’Keefe “is just one of a group of young conservatives who use political pranks and embarrassing recordings to upend what they view as overwhelming liberal biases on college campuses and in the culture at large.” Jon Stewart at the Daily Show said it seems like O’Keefe gets all his story ideas from porn movies.

Instead of dressing up like a pimp to make a splash, why not dig up records to find out what’s really going on? That kind of work might seem boring to people like O’Keefe. But to the reporters who actually do this kind of work, sifting through documents, putting together the pieces of a puzzle, and discovering something no one else knows is rewarding and worthwhile.

Give it a try, James. You might be surprised at the real stories that are out there.

Jen and I wrote a story that ran in Sunday’s paper and was posted online today about the lack of oversight of retaining walls in San Antonio. We looked at this issue after a retaining wall in The Hills of Rivermist, a neighborhood built by Centex Homes, split apart and jeopardized dozens of houses:

Despite the growing popularity of towering retaining walls like the one that buckled last week, San Antonio officials have paid scant attention to the structures in residential subdivisions and can’t vouch for their safety.

No one at City Hall tracked how many walls were built over the years as thousands of residents flocked to the Texas Hill Country and developers reshaped steep terrain for new homes.

City inspectors never checked the walls.

And, according to members of the real estate industry, it wasn’t widely known that a permitting process existed for tall retaining walls.

“No one can find where the city has ever asked for or insisted on a permit,” subdivision developer Norman Dugas said. “I can’t find anyone who has ever gotten one.”

And you thought today’s newspapers were archaic?

Mashable came out with a nice list of resources for Web-savvy mobile journalists. But the list focuses quite a bit on iPhone apps. Not everyone is cool enough for an iPhone, including me.

Here’s what I carry in my messenger bag — or as Jen calls it, my man bag:

This is what I carry around with me most of the time. If I know in advance that I’m going to be covering a story where I’ll be shooting video for online, I’ll also take my camcorder with its external microphone and tripod.

I admit I’m obsessive about carrying around my man bag, even when I’m not on the clock. You just never know when you’ll need need this stuff. What if I’m driving around and see a police chase or something? It would suck if I didn’t have all my gadgets with me.

I was able to take this video one day when I was walking to Starbucks downtown and saw two construction workers dismantling an old sign outside an abandoned store. I had walked under that sign a million times and so I thought there might be a story about this really old building being torn down to make way for something new. Since I had my camera on me, I shot some video, and since I had my notebook and recorder, I interviewed people and found out a new hotel was going to be built at the site. I had discovered a decent story about the changing character of Houston Street, from retail to tourism.

If I hadn’t had my camera on me, I would have missed the chance to take some interesting video. There was no time to run back to the office. And being able to interview people right there at the scene helped me figure out there was an interesting story happening. So the man bag filled with gadgets saved the day. And I didn’t even need an iPhone.

When you work a weekend shift at a newspaper, you never know what kind of story you’re going to cover. Some are kind of lame, but I liked this annual cattle drive on Houston Street in downtown San Antonio. I covered this event a few years ago and Abe Levy wrote the most recent story about the cattle drive, which kicks off the San Antonio Stock Show & Rodeo. I took this video of it last year when Jen and I were downtown on my day off. Good times.

Jen and I wrote a follow-up story today about the sinking neighborhood in San Antonio called the Hills of Rivermist:

The retaining wall that collapsed last week and jeopardized a neighborhood built by Centex Homes was built with less mortar than what engineering plans called for, according to city officials who inspected the wall Friday.

“Staff determined that the retaining wall was not built in accordance with the design provided by (the) design engineer,” Assistant City Manager T.C. Broadnax wrote in an e-mail to his boss, Sheryl Sculley, Mayor Julián Castro and the City Council.

“For example, the building plans for the wall show limestone mortared throughout the wall. Based on field observations of the failed portion of the wall, mortar was not installed according to the building plans.”

There are many different types of retaining walls. The one at Rivermist is called a gravity wall, which relies on a heavy mass of mortar and stones to remain stable. So if a contractor skimps on the mortar in the core of the wall, the wall becomes lighter and it can become unstable.

Here’s the city e-mail describing the lack of mortar inside the wall. The city also set up a new Web page that provides updates about Rivermist. Residents can also report concerns about retaining walls near their homes.

Brilliant.

I’m helping out with the coverage of the “slope failure” at the Hills of Rivermist, the neighborhood in San Antonio where shifting soil and a buckled retaining wall jeopardized homes. Here are some useful resources to learn more about what happened:

Feel free to get in touch with me with any tips or story ideas about #slopefail — here’s my contact page.

Updated 1-29-10: Two more useful Web pages that are new: