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.

The interviews with the kids are classic.

Painfully funny “journalism warning labels” created by British comedian Tom Scott are going viral. The stickers say things like, “Warning: This article is basically just a press release, copied and pasted.” Scott says he’s been posting the stickers on the free papers in London. And he’s making it possible for everyone to do this. You can download the stickers for free. Fans have translated them into 11 languages.

“It seems a bit strange to me that the media carefully warn about and label any content that involves sex, violence or strong language — but there’s no similar labeling system for, say, sloppy journalism and other questionable content,” Scott explained on his blog.

Scott’s making a salient point, but I don’t see why it should be limited to journalists. You can find rehashed press releases on blogs, too. That’s what a block quote is for. And contrary to what Scott claims, when I get an unverified tip, I don’t hang up the phone and start writing a story; I check it out. But some bloggers will simply run with it, then add the caveat that they’re waiting for confirmation. If it’s not true … oh well.

I’m not pointing this out to thump my chest and say the mainstream media should be trusted over everything else. But lately I’ve been noticing similarities between news organizations and many blogs claiming to be different from the media. For example, the Washington press corps is often accused of practicing pack journalism. Whenever some official announcement is made at the White House, everyone jumps on it and writes the same thing.

What’s so different about pack journalism in Washington and pack journalism in the blogosphere? Whenever an official announcement pops up from Google in my RSS reader, minutes later tech blogs are parroting it. Pick your niche; the same thing is happening.

The lesson here is that a blogger faces similar pressures and time constraints as a traditional reporter. It’s easy to make sloppy mistakes, to follow the pack, to rehash stale news.

The real challenge, for both blogs and the media, is doing something different, original, and enlightening for readers.

(Photo credit: Tom Scott)

Some readers — and government officials — wonder why journalists are so nosy and make such a big deal about getting access to government records. Sure, transparency matters. But why make such a big fuss if an agency wants to withhold e-mails or something. Who cares?

Here are five shining examples of why this pesky-open government thing matters.

Last week, the Freedom of Information Foundation of Texas held its annual conference in Austin and announced the winners of the Gavel Awards, which go to journalists who produced stories that shed light on the legal system. A common thread runs through all these stories: They relied extensively on public documents, and uncovered important, previously unknown problems and issues in the community.

So if you think public information isn’t really that big a deal, check out the winning stories:

Steve Thompson and Tanya Eiserer of The Dallas Morning News discovered the Dallas Police Department was under-counting serious crimes, creating the perception that the city was safer than it actually was. The reporters uncovered the story by examining piles of police reports.

Jeremy Roebuck and Jared Janes of the McAllen Monitor relied on public documents to tell the tale of how Hidalgo County was struggling to pay for millions of dollars in indigent defense costs. The reporters discovered the county’s system cost more per capita than any other urban county in Texas.

Leslie Wilber of the Victoria Advocate revealed how an innocent man was jailed for 62 days based on a questionable “scent identification lineup” overseen by a dog handler and his bloodhounds. The obscure law-enforcement technique answers to no laws or regulations and critics call it junk science. But the lineup is still admissible as evidence in court.

Cindy V. Culp of the Waco Tribune-Herald used court data to analyze the track record of a district attorney running for office. The news stories gave voters a clearer picture of a controversy surrounding how many criminal cases were dismissed.

David Schechter and Mark Smith of WFAA-TV uncovered how illegal immigrants who are accused of felonies in the United States — including murder — are routinely deported back to Mexico and set free.

Somebody explain to me again why public information doesn’t matter.

A week ago, Jenny LaCoste-Caputo wrote a front-page story about Holy Cross High School, and how it withheld diplomas from students who owed thousands of dollars in tuition.

This week, Jenny is on her way to a new job in a new city. She’s leaving behind the news business and all its uncertainty.

“It was getting scary,” Jenny said, referring to round-after-round of lay offs in the turbulent media industry. “We got two little kids.”

When a journalist leaves journalism, it’s easy for the bean counters to figure out how much money is saved in pay and benefits. But it’s difficult to calculate the lost impact of all the great stories that will probably go untold by a single talented reporter.

Jenny covered the education beat. She first learned of the problems at Holy Cross in May through a tip. She began talking to “as many people as possible” to vet the complaints about Holy Cross, and she went back and interviewed families to make sure they didn’t change their stories. The didn’t. “It’s not like we took things at face value,” Jenny said.

Here’s the top of the long article Jenny wrote after weeks of work:

For Sylvia Flores, a private school voucher seemed like a winning lottery ticket.

Flores lives in Edgewood Independent School District but desperately wanted a Catholic education for her son, Luis Flores.

It was a dream that was out of reach until she heard about a voucher program funded by San Antonio businessman James Leininger, who spent 10 years and $50 million of his fortune bankrolling a political idea that never caught hold in Texas.

When the voucher program ended after her son’s sophomore year at Holy Cross of San Antonio, Flores was left with a gut-wrenching reality: She couldn’t afford the school Luis loved. But she said that when she opted for public school, Holy Cross’ principal urged her to stay, offering tuition assistance and opportunities to work off the $5,100 in annual tuition.

Ultimately, staying cost Luis his diploma and left Flores with a bill of nearly $10,000 she didn’t expect.

Four families whose children were scheduled to graduate from Holy Cross this year told the San Antonio Express-News that the school’s administration encouraged them and others to remain at the school despite mounting bills, promising help with tuition. But in the second half of the students’ senior year, school officials told the families they would have to pay their tuition bill in full if they wanted their children to graduate. The bills ranged from $6,300 to nearly $14,000.

A teaser for the story was posted online and it generated more than 100 comments before the full article was even published. One thing Jenny learned is that several of the students were athletes, and Holy Cross didn’t raise concerns about their tuition until the sports seasons were over.

“In almost every case, that was what happened,” Jenny said.

Express-News Editor Bob Rivard mentioned the Holy Cross story in a newsroom meeting Thursday, where we all said farewell to Jenny and three other journalists who are moving on to other jobs or going back to school.

Reporter Elizabeth Allen also left the paper, and the conversation at the meeting turned to the memorable reporters like Elizabeth who came to the Express-News after covering news in the Rio Grande Valley. Maro Robbins, Jeanne Russell, Bonnie Pfister … they all wrote outstanding stories. And they’ve all left the news business. It’s sobering to think of all the great stories that are going untold in San Antonio. Not to sound like Donald Rumsfeld, but we don’t even know what we don’t know we’re missing.

Bob said as much during the meeting. While some news executives claim we can do less with more, Bob said he didn’t buy that.

“Make no mistake,” Bob told the departing journalists last week, “by losing you, we are diminished.”

In the age of Facebook and Twitter, you could argue that even though we’re losing some talented voices in the media, in the long run it’s OK because the Internet allows all of us to tell stories. But that argument doesn’t take into account the quality of the stories. Jenny’s article was rich with telling details, which she dug up during weeks of work. That kind of time is a luxury for most bloggers. And that kind of depth is a far cry from a rant on Facebook.

Jenny’s husband, Anton, had covered the environmental beat at the Express-News, and led our coverage of the controversy surrounding the proposed expansion of the nuclear power plant in Bay City, Texas. Anton got a job in Austin and left journalism — and Jenny’s doing the same, working for the Texas Association of School Administrators.

“I’m glad I’m going out on a high note with a story that made some impact,” Jenny said.

Imagine the other high notes if she had stayed.

Columbia Journalism Review published a detailed feature story today by Jake Batsell about the Texas Tribune, the nonprofit news site/data library/journalism experiment that is still defining itself:

I spent nine months scrutinizing the Tribune’s business strategies and editorial work, attending its events, talking to its reporters, and listening to the Texas journalism and political communities size up the new kid on the block. And while it is too early to make sweeping judgments about the Tribune, I came away mostly impressed with what I saw. It is clear and serious about its journalism, but it also has a sense of humor and is willing to try new things, fail, and try again—two qualities in painfully short supply at most traditional media outlets. But make no mistake, this is an experiment, and its success is hardly guaranteed. The Tribune has shown a remarkable ability to raise startup cash, but no one is certain where the long-term money will come from. It has drawn a lot of readers, but a huge portion come for the interactive databases of public information that, while undeniably a boon to government transparency, remain unproven in their concrete journalistic benefits. But more on that later. The Tribune is exciting. It has shaken up the state’s journalism establishment. And it is trying to be something at once familiar and altogether new.

Batsell found a key point about the Tribune — it’s sparking excitement about journalism. Part of that excitement is caused by the charisma of Evan Smith, who was a great cheerleader for Texas Monthly before he became a great cheerleader for the Texas Tribune.

But there’s something else at work here besides Evan’s enthusiasm.

The philanthropic nature of the Tribune sends a message that journalism matters more than corporate profit margins. Instead of dismantling newsrooms, the Tribune is building a new one in fresh ways. I think the Tribune’s donors and its 10,474 Facebook fans appreciate that.

What is it about hurricanes that prompt TV reporters to broadcast live in the wind and rain? It’s like there’s an unwritten rule that they have to make a spectacle of themselves. Wouldn’t it be nice if reporters didn’t become the center of the story, and simply show us what was going on when Hurricane Alex made landfall?

Thankfully, this isn’t wishful thinking. Check out Express-News reporter Vianna Davila’s video showing the impact of Hurricane Alex in the Rio Grande Valley. Notice how this video is a mini-documentary — Vianna is simply an observer showing us the sights and sounds of a major storm.

I’m a big fan of these kinds of online videos, where the reporter is unobtrusively giving viewers a sense of place. For some stories, like a hurricane making landfall, the news article and the news video can compliment each other nicely.

Flying into Chicago two weeks ago, I encountered a crazy thunder storm that stranded my plane on the tarmac of O’Hare International Airport. Turns out, more storms pounded the city the week after I left, and the light show was captured by amazing videos and photographs.

This is a cool time lapse video of lightning hitting the three tallest buildings in Chicago. A photographer for the Chicago Tribune captured the moment of lightning striking two buildings, which sparked an online debate about whether the photo was doctored. Kelly McBride at Poynter discussed how the photo was verified by crowdsourcing.

Long story short: Lightning is cool, kids.

There’s a lesson for journalists somewhere in this video …

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.