In January, Express-News Reporter Jason Buch profiled Edgar Valdez Villarreal, a U.S. citizen from Laredo who had risen through the ranks of a Mexican drug cartel. In high school, Valdez Villarreal was a jock who got the nickname “Barbie” for his light-colored eyes and hair. Years later in Mexico, he was poised to become a ruthless drug boss.
This week, Valdez Villarreal was arrested in Mexico and NPR featured an interesting interview with Jason yesterday about Villarreal. You can hear a Mexican ballad that extols the virtues of the drug lord, and how he’s such an intelligent businessman. Great stuff.
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 biggest single stimulus project scheduled to be built in Bexar County is a new highway interchange between traffic-clogged Loop 1604 and U.S. 281 on San Antonio’s far North Side. The project is estimated to cost $130 million, with $80 million coming from federal stimulus funds that must be spent by 2015.
But the site sits on the environmentally sensitive Edwards Aquifer recharge zone, the primary source of San Antonio’s drinking supply — and the source of San Antonio’s fiercest debates about pollution from urban sprawl tainting the aquifer.
In a way, it’s history repeating itself. The highway intersection was the site of one of the very first controversies involving the aquifer, when developers in the 1970s wanted to build a “super mall” near the location that sparked a petition and referendum by concerned residents who tried to halt the development.
Construction workers on the River Walk's Mission Reach
Our latest story about the stimulus is about how much federal money is flowing to Bexar County, what kind of projects are being funded, and what will the lasting impact be?
Stimulus money is fixing headstones at Fort Sam Houston National Cemetery, building new playgrounds, painting buildings at Lackland AFB, paying for 50 new police officers and reshaping the San Antonio River.
It’s funding high-profile projects that will benefit future generations — and paying for obscure work that hardly will be noticed.
Sometimes, it feels like the biggest beneficiaries of the Recovery Act are companies that make the outlandishly sized checks for ribbon-cuttings, where politicians frequently take credit for stimulus projects.
But behind the photo ops are a large number of companies, government agencies, and nonprofit organizations that were awarded 775 grants and contracts in Bexar County worth more than $850 million, according to spending reports released last week by the Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board. Another $60 million in stimulus money is being loaned to local businesses.
We’ve been spending a few months examining the local impact of the Recovery Act — past stories are here and here. I’ve also been bookmarking useful resources through Diigo — feel free to check out my real-time list of handy websites.
For the latest story, we mostly relied on data you can download directly from Recovery.gov, the website of the Recovery Board. The data doesn’t have a “county” category, but you can match the zip code of each award with the zip codes of your county. If you’re simply interested in seeing what kind of stimulus projects are being funded in your county or neighborhood, the Recovery Board offers an interactive map that lets you drill down to the street level. Each stimulus project shows up as a dot — click on it to learn more details.
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.
Caputo
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.
A few months ago reporter Karisa King got a tip that Michael Amezquita’s job was in danger. Amezquita is the chief appraiser for the Bexar County Appraisal District, the agency that appraises the value of all property in the county, which affects the tax bills of landowners.
Except not all landowners pay property taxes. Case in point: Some nonprofit housing developers get tax breaks under a program to provide affordable housing to the poor.
Amezquita claimed some developers weren’t fulfilling their end of the bargain. “They rent to poor people, but they’re not giving them a break in the rent,” Amezquita said. He revoked the tax exemption status for 42 housing developments, sparking an outcry from developers who claimed Amezquita was out of line. Some board members of the appraisal district sided with the developers.
Karisa’s first story about the conflict ran in April. It was a good primer on the controversy, but Karisa didn’t have much information about the housing developers benefiting from the tax exemptions.
“That begged the question, what’s going on with these housing groups?” Karisa told me when I asked her how she got involved in the story.
So for the next eight weeks, Karisa dived into the arcane world of government housing programs for the poor. The results of what she learned appeared on Sunday’s front page this week: A nonprofit organization called American Opportunity had applied for the most exemptions last year in Bexar County — 22 apartment complexes that could save $4.8 million in taxes in return for providing affordable rent for poor families.
But Karisa learned that Texas sets no caps on the amount of rent that can be charged. She learned American Opportunity, chaired by developer David Starr, was often charging families rents that were higher than they could afford:
To meet financing requirements for some properties, American Opportunity rents to many low-income families. But the state law that created the exemption imposed no rent limits, allowing the group to charge more than fair-market rent and caps used in other affordable housing programs.
Loopholes in state laws and a lack of oversight mean nonprofit groups can exploit the tax incentive without providing housing that is affordable for low-income people.
Struggling families paid as much as $1,040 a month in rent last year for a three-bedroom apartment. For some, making the rent means skimping on groceries, turning off the air conditioning and pinching other basic needs, the kind of hardship that affordable housing is supposed to relieve.
Meanwhile, American Opportunity paid $1.1 million to private companies run by Starr and his family in 2008.
“I learned a whole lot about the world of affordable housing,” Karisa said. “How important it is when lawmakers create these kinds of exemptions to tie it to some kind of test — something that allows you to test whether or not there’s a real public benefit that’s gained.”
For students, bloggers and journalists who look into a complicated topic like this, Karisa said the best thing to do is figure out what kind of documentation exists and then get your hands on it. In this case, Karisa wanted to find out if low-income tenants were truly paying affordable rents. She learned about public reports that showed many tenants were actually paying market-rate rents.
“I totally would not have had any story if there hadn’t been those records,” Karisa said. “It hinges on the documentation.”
Express-News Reporter Guillermo Contreras is covering a federal trial involving the Mexican Mafia, and he wrote about a fascinating court exhibit: The constitution of the Mexican Mafia in Texas.
This document was posted on mySA.com today, and it’s all about setting a strong social structure for the gang:
A democratic vote is needed to approve new members of the Mexican Mafia. The new members must undergo a probationary period of 120 days, and they must be recommended by a sponsoring gang member. The constitution also states: “We all have the right to express opinions, ideals, contradict and criticize constructively.”
“Each member of the Mexikanemi must make the effort to conquer his disabilities; be they pleasure or materials.”
Each member must show respect to each other. “Playing and kidding around among Worthwhiles shall be permitted up to a certain point. Heavy ‘teasing’ of whore, faggot, brown-noser, etc. …. are totally prohibited.”
“Cash bets amongst Worthwhiles with a value of over one pint of ice cream shall be prohibited.”
There are few words that actually describe the criminal activities of the Mexican Mafia. Here they are:
“We shall deal in drugs, contract killings, prostitution, large scale robbery, gambling, weapons, and in everything imaginable.”
I had always wanted to write a story about police chases after I watched a crazy high-speed pursuit unfold on local TV. I wondered how often these chases go bad, and how the San Antonio Police Department keeps track of that information.
Law enforcement agencies usually churn out paperwork for every situation known to man. I made some phone calls and learned that officers must fill out a pursuit-evaluation form after they chase someone. The reports have check boxes for different categories of information, such as whether someone was injured during the chase. When you see boxes like that on a report, chances are, some hapless soul at the government agency types that information into a database. It turned out SAPD has been compiling a database that tracks details of every chase by all its officers.
If you work for a news organization or a blog and stumble upon a previously unknown database filled with rich details about an important public policy issue, you’ve found a great story. Request a copy of the raw data and analyze it. You might be able to tell your audience something new about the world.
SAPD’s pursuit database formed the foundation for my story that ran Sunday. The numbers show that two out of five pursuits damaged cars or property. The number of chases and crashes peaked in 2008, but dropped in 2009 after SAPD emphasized vehicle safety to its officers:
Here’s a copy of the raw data for the years 2003-2009. To me the numbers highlight the difficult position officers are in during a police chase, but they managed to make progress last year.
Getting the data was important. But it didn’t tell the full story — it was missing narratives describing what happened during the chase. The narratives were written down in the hardcopy pursuit reports. So I requested copies of reports for a bunch of chases, including a pursuit that led to the most recent death of an innocent bystander in San Antonio, 85-year-old Edna Hurst:
I also asked for a copy of SAPD’s pursuit policy. It describes the situations in which officers are permitted to pursue suspects. The policy also mentioned that Blue Eagle, the police helicopter unit, is supposed to videotape pursuits if the helicopter is able to assist. So I asked for some videos and came across this incident involving a reckless driver of a pickup truck, which I thought was a good example showing the dynamics of how officers handle chases.
The chase database doesn’t show the location of where the pursuit begins. But it does have a case number for each chase. Using that number, Mike Howell of mySA.com linked the data to Crimebase, a gargantuan data file of offense reports we receive from SAPD. Mike made an interesting map showing where chases occurred in the city in 2009. Click on a chase, and it calls up details from the pursuit data, and a link to a Crimebase report with a brief narrative.
The point of all this work isn’t to make SAPD look bad. It’s to offer people relevant information about a life-or-death issue. I learned a lot working on this story. If we did our job right, so did our readers.
I wrote a story about the dangers of police chases that was published in Sunday’s paper. If you’re a subsciber to the San Antonio Express-News or bought Sunday’s edition, you could read my story. But you can’t read it online — it’s been embargoed for a few days.
I like the Internet. But I like newspapers, too. So I like this new experiment of putting an Internet embargo on a big Sunday story to encourage people to buy the newspaper. It’s actually one of the few innovative ideas generated from our higher-ups. Usually, the only change we hear about in the newsroom is an announcement every once in awhile that there’s going to be some lay offs or a whittling down of the paper, which in turn hurts our quality and gives readers fewer reasons to bother reading our stories.
But I actually like this idea of embargoed stories. It’s about time we give subscribers a reward for sticking with the paper. We’re jacking up rates yet giving away our content online for free, so we really need to give loyal readers a carrot instead of a stick. And it’s not quite the same thing as a pay wall — my entire story about police chases will be posted online in a few days. We’re just saying: If you pay for the paper, you get first dibs.
It’d be nice if we take this experiment to the next level: Give subscribers exclusive online content. When my Sunday story is posted online, it will feature a video of a chase taken from a police helicopter; a map of pursuits in San Antonio; a copy of a pursuit-evaluation report for a chase that killed an innocent bystander; and a link to the raw data we analyzed for the story.
The whole story was based on these primary resources. So if we’re really going to embrace this embargo concept, it’d be cool if we allowed subscribers to go online and check this exclusive content for themselves, before it’s released to the general public.
Maybe non-subscribers would consider signing up for this type of deal and subscribe. Or, for those who don’t want to receive the dead-tree version of the newspaper, we could allow them to pay a reduced price to sign up for online access to the exclusive stories that are published every Sunday.
Like I said, I like the Internet. But I also want to figure out a way to share online content, and reward our loyal subscribers who stick with the newspaper. Maybe this is a good compromise.
I wrote a story about the dangers of police chases that was published in Sunday’s paper. If you’re a subsciber to the 