Investigative Journalist in Houston, Texas
For longtime observers of local politics, the terms “City Hall” and “FBI” conjure memories of a bribery investigation that snared former city councilmen Enrique Martin and John Sanders. On Friday, FBI agents and San Antonio white-collar crime detectives showed up at the city’s Planning and Development Services department and seized a computer and files belonging …
What others are saying about watchdog journalism: Nieman Journalism Lab: Former Washington Post Editor Len Downie says for-profit news orgs won’t create enough journalism. The Guardian: How investigative reporting makes use of the internet. Now the Details: Jeffrey Dvorkin argues there’s a downside to nonprofit investigative reporting.
Zachary Adam Cohen penned a great piece for bloggers who want to do more than write clever riffs off the work of others. The post disappeared into the mists of the Internet but here are the relevant parts: I personally love blogs that rip content from a bigger site and comment on it. I think …
There’s still more news in the story of the retaining wall collapse at the Hills of Rivermist — builder Centex Homes declined to meet with residents today. If you want to know more about the background of this story, check out this timeline of the major events related to the retaining wall collapse.
This speech is a decade old but it never grows stale. It still offers a fresh, compelling look at what makes a good reporter tick. John MacCormack is a veteran journalist at the San Antonio Express-News. Madalyn Murray O’Hair was a controversial atheist who had been reported missing in Austin. Most people believed O’Hair was …
Nearly two months after a retaining wall split open at the Hills of Rivermist in San Antonio, Centex Homes submitted plans to the city for a new wall that is reinforced with concrete piers and will cost at least $4 million: Centex Homes is hoping the third time’s the charm. This week it produced a …
Political junkies, rejoice. C-Span has posted nearly its entire video archive online for the public to search and view. This is awesome. Let’s say you’re researching the roots of the economic crisis, and you want to explore whether the deregulation of the banking industry played a role. The C-Span archive offers the full video of …
In the process of blogging about WOAI’s open-records battle with the Texas Department of Transportation, I had a chance to revisit the Web site set up by the Freedom of Information Foundation of Texas. The foundation has completely revamped its old, sleepy site — check out how it looked as recently as 2008 in the …
After a tall retaining wall buckled in a San Antonio neighborhood, threatening dozens of homes, rancher Ernest Ruiz called us with a tip about another faulty retaining wall. Ruiz’s story had an interesting twist: The collapsed wall near his rural property hadn’t been constructed by Centex Homes or other homebuilders. This wall was owned by …
WOAI featured a unique, data-driven story last week about the high number of accidents caused by inattentive drivers talking on their cell phones. Journalists at the television station analyzed an accident database kept by the Texas Department of Transportation that tracks contributing factors for all vehicle crashes in Texas. To get the story, WOAI had …