Investigative Journalist in Houston, Texas
Braylon Nelson is one of the sweetest kids you’ll ever meet. Like any other 2-year-old boy with an insatiable curiosity, he asks a million questions and loves stories. When I visited him, a 400-page book of fairy tales was on his bed near the medical equipment that helps him breathe and eat. Braylon’s father was …
Daniel Russell stood in front of a crowd of investigative journalists in Boston last week and showed us this picture of a random skyscraper in an unknown city: Russell posed a riddle: What’s the phone number of the office where this picture was snapped? Let that sink in. He wasn’t asking for a phone number …
The classic stereotype about journalists is that we’re all backstabbing vultures who would sell our mothers for a good story. Nothing could be further from the truth. First of all, we only sell our mothers for really, really good stories. But more importantly, we’re actually an amazingly friendly, collaborative bunch. I’m in Boston where more …
A few months ago, my boss, Express-News Projects Editor David Sheppard, asked me to see what we could find out about wrong-way crashes on highways. It seemed like there were a lot of these deadly accidents in the news lately, and local officials had recently unveiled a $500,000 pilot project to install flashing wrong-way signs …
If you’ve ever suspected your neighborhood gas station is stiffing you at the pump, you might already know you can file a complaint with the Weights and Measures Program at the Texas Department of Agriculture. The agency’s inspectors verify the accuracy of gas pumps. But which stations rack up the most complaints, flunk the most …
With all the talk about print being dead, you’d think no one actually picks up newspapers anymore to read the archaic things. Tell that to Elaine Austin Palmer. Palmer curates the Wesley Peacock House, a historic home built in 1890 near Woodlawn Lake that served as the headquarters of a military academy. Related: Yard sale …
As corporate honchos try to paint a rosy picture about the New Orleans Times-Picayune downsizing and no longer publishing a daily print edition, I hope this nugget from the newspaper’s editor, Jim Amoss, is more than corporate spin: Plans call for the Wednesday, Friday and Sunday editions of The Times-Picayune to be in many ways …
Journalists Adam Sulfridge and Samantha Swindler were both in their 20s and working for a small newspaper, the Times-Tribune in Whitley County, Kentucky, when they began investigating rumors about Sheriff Lawrence Hodge and his ties to drug dealers. Federal agents had investigated Hodge in the past but their inquiry fizzled. The sheriff was too insulated …
How did a housekeeper at the Crockett Hotel fall six stories to her death down an elevator shaft? A scathing report by a state inspector offers a theory.
I shot some video over the weekend but it was so windy most of the audio was obliterated. So I ended up making a music video. It wasn’t exactly what I planned. But maybe it was better.