Investigative Journalist in Houston, Texas
A look at enterprising journalism at the San Antonio Express-News and how it’s done.
The San Antonio Express-News published an investigative story Sunday that revealed how some local nursing homes consistently neglect the elderly but are allowed to stay in business with little or no penalty. Here are a few tips and resources we used for our story that might help you if you’re looking for a good nursing …
An interesting status report was posted online tonight by San Antonio officials who are examining the retaining wall collapse at the Hills of Rivermist. Officials met with local builders, who were told they must review all retaining walls built over the past three years that are more than four feet tall. The builders must make …
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 original engineering plans for the …
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 …
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. …
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: In Google Earth you can view a series of aerial photos to see how …
Bing makes online maps that offer a bird’s eye view of a landscape, creating a 3D image effect. This is a nice feature for big news stories like this one: Authorities evacuated about 80 homes in a Northwest Side neighborhood Sunday when ground caved in behind several houses, pushing earth down a 30-foot hill and …
View Texas Stories in a larger map I was working on my clips page over the holidays and thought it’d be cool to make a new Google map of my past stories. Each dot on the map is a dateline for an article. I was a little amazed by the variety of far-flung locales I’ve …
2009 was a brutal year for the Express-News. We lost a third of the newsroom in March from painful layoffs, and the exodus of talent was demoralizing, there’s no way to sugarcoat it. Even after the layoffs, we’re still occasionally losing bright journalists who don’t see much of a future in mainstream news. They might …
Elaine Ayala wrote a touching obit today about Express-News photographer Robert Earl McLeroy Jr., who was known to everyone in the newsroom as “Mac.” At the age of 57, Mac died Tuesday from complications from a massive stroke he suffered in May: McLeroy worked at the newspaper for 29 years. He took a buyout in …