Investigative Journalist in Houston, Texas
Ten years ago (wow, I’m getting old) I wrote a series of stories about the safety record of San Antonio’s major theme parks — Six Flags Fiesta Texas, SeaWorld San Antonio, and Splashtown. I learned state officials keep a little-known database that tracks amusement-ride injuries in Texas. The database isn’t perfect. The injuries are self-reported …
It seemed like every section of today’s paper had a story that grabbed me and surprised me and told me something about the world I didn’t know before. Brian Chasnoff wrote about unregulated dog breeders selling sick puppies to unsuspecting buyers. Ariel Barkhurst checked the background of a funeral home administrator who was accused of …
Not that I’m biased or anything, but my girlfriend Jennifer Hiller won two awards for a story she wrote about the Texas Residential Construction Commission, a state agency ostensibly created to help homeowners resolve disputes with homebuilders. In reality, the agency was often powerless to help consumers and it’s going to be dissolved. Jennifer spent …
You can check the safety record of Texas theme parks and carnivals by searching a unique database of 1,800 reports detailing broken bones, chipped teeth and other injuries. Officials at the Texas Department of Insurance collect injury reports from amusement ride owners and type the information into a database. We obtained a copy of the …
The Daily Show With Jon Stewart Mon – Thurs 11p / 10c End Times www.thedailyshow.com Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Newt Gingrich Unedited Interview The Daily Show’s visit to the New York Times was hilarious — “The spinning — always the spinning. Let’s see you do that, computers.” But one of the editors could …
Tony Rogers at About.com wrote a good post on why journalists should make their own Web sites, and yours truly was one of the reporters mentioned. Tony did a nice job laying out the benefits of publishing a portfolio of your best work. He found some horror stories of reporters losing years of work because …
Cow poo pens from Angela Grant on Vimeo. Angela Grant, the first full-time video guru at the San Antonio Express-News, gave me some fantastic tips for anyone who wants to improve their skills in shooting and editing video. If you’re tired of uploading shaky cell phone clips to YouTube, these pointers are for you. Angela …
View more news videos at: http://www.nbcdfw.com/video. It had been a long time since I last heard from John Putnam. I met him in person once when we attended a court hearing at an old, eerily quiet courthouse in Llano, Texas, but we’ve had countless conversations by phone. And when the phone rang at my desk …
Express-News Reporter Scott Huddleston is covering the Article 32 military hearing of Capt. Michael Fontana, a nurse at Wilford Hall who is accused of killing three civilian patients under his care. I had helped Scott cover this story when Fontana was originally charged and we learned the Bexar County Medical Examiner had performed autopsies and …
Gotta love this news story. Watching it, I realized not much has changed when it comes to the media and the Internet. True, it doesn’t take two hours to download the newspaper anymore. But on the other hand, we’re still figuring out how to make money off this whole Internet thing ….