John Tedesco

After Reporter Karisa King began writing about the complicated world of tax breaks for housing developers — and how those incentives are being abused — tipsters told her to check out state Rep. Jose Menendez.

Karisa did. And what she found out was published on the front page of last Sunday’s San Antonio Express-News:

After the development firm NRP Group LLC lost its second bid for tax credits to finance an affordable-housing project on the city’s West Side, an influential ally intervened in the company’s cause.

State Rep. Jose Menendez took the lectern at the Texas Department of Housing and Community Affairs and urged board members to fund the San Juan Square II project, a 144-unit apartment complex that would replace blighted public housing. …

What Menendez did not tell the board at the meeting was that the development represented something else: a financial boon for the company he works for, Stewart Title, which had received $91,000 for issuing title insurance on the project’s first stage, and landed nearly all of NRP’s business on affordable-housing deals.

Payouts from the San Juan developments were among about $1.8 million paid to Stewart Title from NRP housing deals since 2003, records show.

Since joining the Legislature in 2000, Menendez has been one of the most outspoken supporters of NRP and other developers in the affordable-housing sector.

At the same time, the San Antonio Democrat has ascended the ranks of Stewart Title to become vice president for commercial development in the company’s national division.

Karisa said she spent six weeks working on the story about Menendez.
It was easy to confirm that he worked for Stewart Title. But his ties to the company raised a hard-to-answer question: How much money did Stewart Title make from the housing deals? That’s not something you can answer by Googling it.

Sometimes journalism is simply the act of quantifying something. You might know the broad outlines of a story very early in the reporting process, but you have to figure out how to fill in the gaps.

If you’ve ever bought a house, you know real-estate transactions churn out tons of paperwork. Normally most of those records are private. But because tax breaks were involved in the housing deals Karisa was looking at, the real estate records were considered public information, open to anyone who asked.

Karisa found the fees paid to Stewart Title by driving to Austin and reading the records for housing projects that receive tax breaks, which are filed at the Texas Department of Housing and Community Affairs in Austin. “I spent two days just going through boxes and boxes of documents,” Karisa said.

As she read through the files, Karisa typed key information such as the title fees into a simple Excel spreadsheet. After days of work, she was able to add up the fees for each housing project: A grand total of $1.8 million in title fees were paid to Stewart Title.

What did Mendendez have to say about that? Check out the whole story, it’s a great read.

Hand it to Bexar County Commissioner Tommy Adkisson — his feud with the Texas Attorney General and the San Antonio Express-News is, at the very least, exposing a flaw in the state’s open-records law.

Adkisson doesn’t want to release private e-mails in which he discussed public business. The attorney general’s office told him he has to release the e-mails. However, there’s an important caveat: Adkisson is the one who’s responsible for identifying the e-mails that pertain to the public’s business.

Adkisson. The guy who doesn’t want to give up any e-mails. He’s the one who’s supposed to go through his Hotmail account or whatever and turn over copies of e-mails that can be deleted with a mouse click.

In related news, a public interest group, the Corrupt Regime of Associated Politicians (C.R.A.P.) announced today that they’ll be conducting all business on Yahoo! e-mail accounts.

Nothing to see here. Move along.

Poynter’s News University hosted a Webinar today about tools for mobile journalists. Instructor Damon Kiesow, who posts on Poynter’s Mobile Media blog, brought a clear message to the discussion: These nifty smart-phone apps are simply tools that help us tell stories. The technology should not overshadow the journalism.

At the same time, you need to stay on top of this rapidly evolving technology and use it to truly understand it. I had blogged about handy Android apps for journalists a few weeks ago. Here are some more smart phone apps and tools Kiesow recommended:

Audioboo: For instant podcasting — make a recording on your phone and upload it straight to the Web. Simple.

Yelp, Foursquare, and Gowalla: Can be used for researching businesses and finding customers.

Eye-Fi: Smart cards for cameras that create WiFi connections and let you upload photos. Awesome.

Dropbox: Handy file-sharing system.

Guess where we stayed last week. Here’s a hint:

This, my friends, is South Padre Island, where Jen surfed and baby Pete got to marvel at the ocean for the first time.

But when it was time to go and we tried to catch our Southwest Airlines flight out of Harlingen, a “mechanical issue” delayed our plane before it even arrived at the airport. Once it landed, all the passengers lined up to board. But then we were told the mechanical issue had to be fixed again. The hours dragged by as we entertained Pete and hoped he stayed in a good mood.

When you’re stuck at the airport, it’s a good idea to channel your inner Louis C.K. and remember that long-distance trips used to take weeks or months, not hours. At the same time, it does get annoying when you realize you could probably drive to your destination faster than the time you spent waiting at the airport. And you also wonder exactly how safe your plane is if it’s grounded for a nagging “mechanical issue.”

I asked one of the Southwest attendants what the nature of the mechanical issue was, and he told me it was a hydraulic leak. The mechanic on call was about 30 miles away in Brownsville, and he didn’t even arrive to start fixing the leak until 4:20 p.m., about two hours after our flight was supposed to depart. He drove up in an SUV, talked on his cell phone for about 10 minutes, and started taking apart the left engine:

The chances of getting hurt in a plane crash are very, very low. But if you’ve got nothing to do while a lone mechanic is trying to figure out what’s wrong with the plane that’s about to hurtle you and your family through the sky, there’s a way to pass the time and check the plane’s safety record.

Look for the “N” number near the tail. Here’s a photo of the number on our plane:

With that number, you can visit this website maintained by the National Transportation Safety Board and check a database of reports documenting aviation accidents and incidents. You can search by all kinds of parameters — including the N-number of a particular aircraft.

You never know what you’re going to find when you do these searches. Nearly 10 years ago, an engine on a Continental Airlines jet carrying six Corpus Christi officials malfunctioned and the flight had to make an emergency landing. No one was hurt. I checked the N-number and found the same plane had a similar problem nearly a year earlier. Here’s the top of the Dec. 8, 2000 story I wrote:

A Continental Airlines jet that made an emergency landing after an engine failed Wednesday experienced a similar incident last year in Florida, government records show. No one was injured at the Corpus Christi International Airport when a Boeing MD-80 carrying 65 passengers – including six city officials – made an abrupt emergency landing shortly after one of its engines lost power.

City Council members described hearing loud popping noises from the right side of the aircraft. Jim Nelson, chief of public safety at the airport, said the plane was able to land with its remaining engine.

“We could tell something was wrong,” City Council member Melody Cooper said. “It was really scary. All they told us was they couldn’t fire (the engine) up to full power. I guess we didn’t know enough to scream.”

On March 16, 1999, the same passenger jet had taken off from Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport in Florida when a “loud bang” was heard during the first few minutes of flight.

The plane’s left engine failed, according to a Federal Aviation Administration incident report, and the pilot circled back for an emergency landing. None of the five crew members and 141 passengers was injured. …

The accident database is an amazing resource. You can search the narrative field of all the incident reports. So you could search for the words “bird” or “birds” if you’re curious how often they cause problems for aircraft. That became an important issue after a flock of birds struck a US Airways flight and forced it to land in the Hudson River.

The N-number can tell you the model of a plane, who owns it, and its age — our plane, not surprisingly, was a Boeing 737, the workhorse of Southwest Airlines. You can also look up Service Difficulty Reports, which document what are usually minor problems. Landings.com also offers access to the same government databases.

In our case, about the craziest thing I could find for our plane was a service difficulty report in 1998 that said the plane had to make an unscheduled landing because of a leaky window. In the accident database, there was no mention of our 737′s N-number, which made me feel better when we finally boarded the flight and made our way home.

Check out this open-records story by Josh Baugh: A Bexar County official wants to sue the attorney general in an effort to withhold e-mails from the San Antonio Express-News — because the official believes the newspaper is biased:

Bexar County Commissioner Tommy Adkisson refuses to comply with a Texas attorney general’s ruling that ordered him to release e-mails in his private accounts that contain public information. This week he instructed the Bexar County district attorney’s office to sue the AG.

The San Antonio Express-News submitted an open-records request under the Texas Public Information Act on Feb. 17, seeking all e-mails between Adkisson and grass-roots toll opponent Terri Hall regarding business of Bexar County and the Metropolitan Planning Organization, of which Adkisson is chairman.

The request sought e-mail correspondence from Adkisson’s county-provided e-mail address as well as from two private accounts he maintains. The newspaper is seeking the e-mails because they would offer insight into Adkisson’s management style at the MPO.

The story raises two issues that ought to trouble open-records advocates:

One is that public officials are keenly aware that their government e-mails are public documents, and they are turning to private e-mail accounts to conduct government business.

The other is Adkisson’s explanation for seeking to withhold his e-mails from the newspaper: He believes the Express-News is biased and has a pro-toll road agenda.

Even if Adkisson’s claim were true, the point is irrelevant when it comes to public information. In Texas, a government record is either public, or it isn’t. In order for an agency to withhold a record, it must cite a legal exemption. For example, a section of the Texas Public Information Act says investigative files of law enforcement agencies don’t have to be made public.

The motives of the person requesting the information has no bearing on whether a document is public. In fact, under the law, officials aren’t even supposed to ask why someone wants the information. Otherwise, government officials could withhold everything from the public simply by saying they don’t trust the people asking for the information. Or they could play favorites and give information to preferred journalists and bloggers.

So now the county is going to spend taxpayer money on a legal effort to withhold information from taxpayers. Maybe Josh can find out how much money the county will spend on the case — assuming no one questions his motives for asking.

The first thing you need to do today is read this story by New York Times reporter C.J. Chivers. It’s about a boy in Afghanistan who was bitten by a viper and faced certain death if he didn’t receive medical treatment from U.S. troops.

Go ahead, read the whole thing. Chances are, you won’t be able to stop.

All done? Did you notice how Chivers piqued your curiosity?

He didn’t give away the ending.

Chivers began the tale by telling us about the boy and the snake bite, and the father who knew his son could die.

But then Chivers left us hanging. He didn’t immediately tell us if the boy lived. And that suspense is a good thing.

Not all news articles can be told in a simple but compelling chronology. But many stories that could be, aren’t. Imagine how the story about the viper bite would have been handled by most writers. The first two sentences are Chivers’; the last one is mine:

KHAN NESHIN, Afghanistan — Five-year-old Sadiq was not a casualty of war. He was simply unlucky. The boy had opened a sack of grain at his home early on Wednesday morning, and a pit viper coiled inside lashed up and bit him above the lip.

His father, Kashmir, knew his son was sure to die. With no hospital anywhere nearby, he rushed the boy to an American outpost to plead for help. By midafternoon, Sadiq’s breathing was labored. Respiratory failure was not long off.

But after a harrowing night, U.S. troops saved the boy, who is alive and well today.

Most readers would have scanned the beginning of that story and said, “That’s nice.” Then they’d turn the page to scan the top paragraphs of the next inverted-pyramid-style news article.

Chivers took a different approach. The engine of his story, the thing that drives readers all the way through it, is the question: What happens to the boy?

To find out, you have to sit down and invest yourself in the whole the story. And along the way, you get lost in the article and forget you need to pack lunch for the kids before they go to school. You’re half a world away in Afghanistan, hoping the snake-bitten boy survives.

(Photo credit: Nic’s events on Flickr)

You don’t need a smart phone to be a good journalist. But it can be a useful tool, just like a notebook and pen. You can rely on it in a pinch if you don’t have the gear in your man purse satchel with you. And a few apps might radically change the way you find, organize and share information.

Here are some cool Android apps I’ve been experimenting with:

For notes: Evernote is a free app that lets you take notes, pictures, and audio recordings. Your files are synced with Evernote and can be accessed from your desktop computer. Evernote is also useful for taking pictures of documents — it automatically scans the image and recognizes the text. You can search those keywords. Tech consultant Shawn Miller wrote a detailed review of Evernote and how he uses it for just about everything.

Police scanner: Scanner Radio checks for live streams of emergency channels in your area and lets you listen to police scanners on your phone.

Voice recorder: Google offers an app to record face-to-face interviews.

Live stream video: You can record free, live videos with Qik, Ustream, and Bambuser. Very handy if you’re at the scene of a compelling story or covering a speech. Here’s an example of a Qik video taken by Express-News police reporter Eva Ruth Moravec when she was at a school where authorities detonated a dangerous substance:

The audio and visual quality of these videos usually aren’t the greatest, so I’d recommend using a good camera with an external microphone, and video editing software for stories that don’t have to be broadcast right that instant. But for breaking news, live stream video can be crucial.

Photo editing: You can crop and edit pictures on your phone with Adobe Photoshop.

Reference: Dictionary.com has an app that gives you a mobile dictionary and thesaurus, and Wapedia offers a simple interface to look up information on Wikipedia. There’s an app for CIA Factbook to look up profiles of every country in the world. Yellowbook puts the yellow pages on your mobile phone, allowing you to look up local businesses.

For political junkies, the Sunlight Foundation made the Congress app. You can look up bills and profiles of U.S. senators and representatives, read their tweets and check out their YouTube videos, and contact them.

Bookmarking tools: When you find a cool Web page on your cell phone, apps for Diigo and Delicious let you bookmark the page and look it up on your desktop computer.

Google Voice: Etan Horowitz at Poynter offers a nice review of Google Voice for journalists. Google provides a free phone number that can be assigned to multiple phones — even a land line. Your original phone numbers will still work. In the Google Voice app for Android, when someone leaves you a voice mail, Google transcribes (somewhat accurately) the message, so you can quickly read it and get the gist of what the person wants without even listening to it. When someone calls your Google number, you can press 4 to record the call — another handy tool if you’re caught without a recorder. You get an e-mail of each voice mail and audio recording, and you can embed them on Web pages. Lifehacker looked at the pros and cons of Google Voice.

Feel free to share other handy apps. I’ll update this post with your suggestions and other discoveries I find later.

Update: Poynter’s News University hosted a Webinar on June 17 about tools for mobile journalists. Here are some more smart phone apps and tools:

Audioboo: For instant podcasting — make a recording on your phone and upload it straight to the Web. Simple.

Yelp, Foursquare, and Gowalla: Can be used for researching businesses and finding customers.

Eye-Fi: Smart cards for cameras that create WiFi connections and let you upload photos. Awesome.

Dropbox: Handy file-sharing system.

(Photo credit: Johan Larsson)

If you bookmark lots of websites, then at some point you’ve fruitlessly searched for a specific page that you bookmarked years ago with your browser. Not fun.

Diigo is a bookmarking tool that lets you build a searchable archive of websites that interest you.

Like Delicious, there’s a social-media component to Diigo. You set up a profile, follow people, set up groups, and view popular Web pages. And just like Delicious, when you bookmark a page, you add tags.

But Diigo makes it a little easier to find those bookmarked pages. It saves a cache version of the page, so you can do a keyword search of the actual text. That’s important if you forget how you tagged a certain page, but remember some key phrases. You can also highlight the particular sentences on a Web page that you find interesting.

What this all means is if you want to find a Web page you bookmarked years ago, you can find it by typing words or phrases you read on the page. Diigo will remember it for you. That’s certainly better than a frustrating search of the dusty old bookmark folders in your Web browser.

Shawn Miller wrote an amazingly detailed review of Evernote, a free service that lets you take notes, pictures and recordings; sync them with Evernote; and read and search all your material on Web browsers, desktop software, and mobile apps:

Why install the same application in so many different places? Evernote stores your collected items in the “cloud,” so every time you capture something using, say, an iPhone, that item resides on the Evernote server and thus becomes available through other interfaces such as the standalone Evernote application on a desktop machine or via the Evernote website visited on your laptop.

Miller explains the myriad ways he relies on Evernote. To use a technical term, it looks wicked awesome for journalists and researchers. I’m now inspired to try it out on my Android phone — check the instructional video.

Update: Just found this vid that demonstrates how Evernote uses a type of Optical Character Recognition when you upload photos. So when you type keyword searches, you can find the words in documents you photograph. Madness.

On March 26, City Hall reporter Josh Baugh got an adrenaline-pumping tip: FBI agents had seized files at the office of Fernando De León, a city official who reviewed permits for real estate development in San Antonio.

The tip sparked a frantic series of phone calls that afternoon as Josh and I tried to figure out what was going on. Authorities said they couldn’t discuss many details — there was still an active investigation, and De León hadn’t been charged with a crime. It was an understandable response, but we had to tell readers what was happening at a city department funded by their tax dollars and permit fees.

Trying to find answers in a story like this is like working on a jigsaw puzzle, only you have to go out and interview people and dig up records to find the missing pieces. And even then, you’re only going to see part of the picture. But after a lot of work, here’s the gist of what we know today:

Authorities are scrutinizing at least two players: De León and a permit-expediting company called Rapid Permit Services. Federal officials subpoenaed records last year at Pape-Dawson Engineers Inc., one of the largest engineering firms in town, to gather information about Rapid Permit Services and possibly others. Pape-Dawson is not the target of the inquiry;

Rapid Permit Services got a plum job at the Rim, an 800-acre shopping center;

De León reviewed and approved some of the paperwork for the Rim that had been filed by Rapid Permit Services;

De León’s sister and possibly one other family member are tied to Rapid Permit Services.

There’s certainly far more to this story, but it’s a start. If you’re digging into a murky topic like this for a blog or news organization, here are a few tips that can help you find the missing pieces of the puzzle:

Follow the bread crumbs: Knowledgeable people and pertinent documents can lead you to more people and more documents. For example, once we learned about Rapid Permit Services, we turned to the Texas Secretary of State’s office. That’s where companies file incorporation papers. For a small fee, you can search those records online, and look up pdf files of the original documents:

Incorporation papers for Rapid Permit Services

These records lead to other people and records — in this case, the name of Rebeca Lopez, who turned out to be De León’s sister. Keep following the bread crumbs and see where the lead.

Request the licensing file: When you’re backgrounding someone and learn the person works in a profession that requires a professional license — such as an engineering license — contact the state agency that regulates that profession, and request a copy of the person’s licensing file. The records in the file are usually public and contain things like the license application, educational history and any reprimands. De León is an engineer, and the Texas Board of Professional Engineers quickly provided us with a pdf of De León’s complete file. His license application listed an address in Laredo that proved to be pertinent.

Connect the dots: In many investigative stories, you’re trying to find connections between people and organizations. In our case, the goal was to find connections between De León and Rapid Permit Services. As we examined documents and interviewed people, we kept track of every name, date, phone number, address, and other tidbits. Then we saw where the information intersected.

When De León applied for his engineering license, he listed an address in Laredo. That turned out to be a key piece of information — in another document tied to Rapid Permit Services, that same address was mentioned. A woman named Marcela Alicia Marquez had filed an assumed name certificate with the county to register Rapid Permit Services as a proprietorship, and she listed the address in Laredo:

Assumed Name Certificate for Rapid Permit Services

She could be related to De León — and we might have missed that connection if we hadn’t typed in every address we came across.

Build a chronology: Plug all the dates you find into a chronology, and interesting angles might emerge. Rapid Permit Services was incorporated around the same time the Rim was being developed. Was the firm specifically created to get a piece of the pie at the Rim?

Who knows? It could be another piece of the puzzle.

(Photo credit: liza31337)