Looking forward to the future of journalism

Follow the money: Searchable payroll database of city employees posted online

Reporter Greg Jefferson wrote a story in today’s paper that examined how taxpayer money is being spent on salaries and overtime for San Antonio’s 10,000 city employees. The story looks at the city’s highest-paid employees, and explains why $13 million in overtime went to the Fire Department and many of its dispatchers. This information was … Read more

Fire response times: Using public data to uncover hidden stories

fire response times in san antonio

After retired state Sen. Frank Madla and members of his family died in a fire in November 2006, the tragedy raised an obvious question: Are San Antonio firefighters doing a good job arriving to fires quickly and keeping residents safe? Express-News Projects Editor David Sheppard asked us to find out. At this point, what would … Read more

Burn fat while you sleep? Not so fast …

Body Solutions CEO Harry Siskind cried and apologized in a San Antonio courtroom yesterday. His claims that a fruity drink could burn fat “while you sleep” had been debunked. He no longer pays radio disc jockeys to tout Body Solutions on the air. He’s not sitting in the front row at San Antonio Spurs games … Read more

Exposing the gun buyers for Mexican drug cartels

Day 2 of “Texas’ Deadliest Export” is out. The series shows how easy it is for Mexican drug cartels to buy guns in Texas. Sunday’s story by Reporter Guillermo Contreras focuses on the straw buyers — the people with clean criminal histories who buy guns that wind up being used in cop killings and gun … Read more

Express-News reporter wins prize for environmental reporting about eroding beaches

Receding Coastlines in Texas

Anton Caputo, the environmental reporter for the San Antonio Express-News, won this year’s Risser prize for his series about the impact of climate change in Texas. The $3,000 prize is named after James Risser, a Pulitzer-prize winning journlist who wrote about environmental problems that are unique to the Western United States. Anton wrote about shrinking … Read more

New web page: Express-News special reports

San Antonio Express-News investigative news stories

Our paper’s web guru, Fernando Ortiz, designed this new web page to showcase some of the best journalism at the San Antonio Express-News. The page offers a list of links to online forums where readers can talk about the stories, and it highlights the most recent project by Todd Bensman about gunrunning in Mexico. At … Read more