We’ll be exploring topics such as transportation and commuting, the ever-changing demographics of our region, and the far-reaching impact of extreme weather and climate change. We’re committed to uncovering stories that not only inform, but also spark conversations and inspire action.

We’re eager to hear from you. Do you have a story idea? Have you witnessed something that needs to be brought to light? Don’t hesitate to contact me. We value your contributions and believe that the best journalism is driven by strong connections with the community we serve.

Please share your thoughts and ideas. We’re listening!

The post The Houston Chronicle is launching a new ‘Key Topics’ team. Here’s how to send us story ideas. appeared first on John Tedesco.

Now that digital newsroom has a name, a website and a growing roster of journalists — including yours truly.

The name of this ambitious news operation is the Houston Landing, a nod to the Bayou City’s origins at Allen’s Landing in 1836 and NASA’s mission to the moon more than a century later. Our full website will launch later this spring, but you can visit the early version of the site to sign up for updates, search for job openings, get to know our growing team of award-winning journalists and read the types of stories we’re going to be digging into.

Longtime readers of this blog (hi, Mom!) know that I’ve always been a fan of newspapers. That hasn’t changed. I worked for three years at the Houston Chronicle and for more than two decades at its sister paper in San Antonio, the Express-News. I still believe if you don’t subscribe to your friendly neighborhood local newspaper, you’re simply missing out.

But I’m also a fan of good journalism wherever it exists. And these days, nonprofit newsrooms are emerging across the country to fill the void created by budget cuts and layoffs plaguing the media industry.

A not-so-new revenue model

Ever since the Texas Tribune announced it was hiring a team of veteran reporters in 2009 to launch a digital, nonprofit news operation, I’ve watched from afar, maybe a little enviously, as it tried new things and got people excited about the civic importance of journalism. So when the yet-to-be-named nonprofit newsroom in Houston hired my boss at the Chronicle to be its first editor in chief in August after a national job search, my interest piqued.

Mizanur Rahman was a longtime editor at the Chronicle, most recently leading the investigations team where I worked. He’s a thoughtful journalist who always made our stories better and he’s simply an incredible human being.

After he left the paper, Miz and I met at Campesino Coffee House and I thought we’d talk about all the things I should be doing as I desperately tried to fill his shoes as his temporary replacement on the I-Team. Instead, he told me about his vision for the nonprofit and asked whether I wanted to join him and help build something new as his second in command.

A focus on local news

We both agree the greater Houston area has no shortage of media outlets producing exceptional journalism. But Miz said there is a shortage of in-depth local news that’s accessible to everyone. You can read about our goals for the Landing and the problems we want to fix in his announcement letter to the community:

The American Journalism Project, which helps build nonprofit newsrooms, conducted surveys, interviews and focus groups with residents of Greater Houston. The message was clear: People do not feel they have access to the trustworthy, local and deeply reported stories they need for their daily lives.

We’re trying to fix that.

The Houston Landing will provide trusted reporting about local issues important to our region, stories that offer solutions to pressing problems and investigative journalism that keeps the powerful accountable.

I trust Miz and decided to join him as the Landing’s managing editor. Our full site will launch later this spring as we grow into one of the largest nonprofit newsrooms in the U.S. that’s devoted to local news. We hope to collaborate with other media outlets in the Houston area and share their top stories.

Meanwhile, you can check out our preliminary site and learn more about our founding team of award-winning journalists: investigative reporter Alex Stuckey; columnist Maggie Gordon; diverse communities reporter Monique Welch; and our photo editor, Marie D. De Jesús.

I hope you’ll join us on this journey. If you have any questions or ideas about our next moves, we’re listening. I’ve always believed journalism should be a two-way conversation. The Houston Landing is making good on that promise.

The post The Houston Landing has big plans for local news. Join us. appeared first on John Tedesco.

Mayor Sylvester Turner announced Sunday that Ezra Blount, a 9-year-old boy who was trampled by the crowd, died from extensive injuries, making him the 10th and youngest victim. Blount’s father had tried to save the boy by hoisting him on his shoulders, but lost conciousness as the crowd pressed against him.

If you attended the Astroworld Festival and shot video, you can help us investigate what went wrong and why.

The Houston Chronicle set up a web form where fans can submit videos they shot at the chaotic concert. The timestamps and locations of the videos can help a team of reporters construct a timeline of what happened. Timestamps were incredibly useful for my colleagues Zach Despart and Dug Begley when we wrote this initial account of the mayhem:

At 9:11 p.m., concertgoer Eric Daniels, 47, began taking video of attendees trying to escape the section closest to the stage. Timestamps from the videos he and others took reveal a chronology of the mounting chaos.

At 9:23 p.m., concertgoer Ellen Elise Evans filmed fans climbing speaker rigging to escape the crush. Unable to move in the throng, she described those moments as the scariest in her life.

“People were getting pushed down or around. It was a tidal wave of human bodies,” Evans said. “I saw girls crying and wanting to leave.”

At 9:24 p.m., as Scott noticed a man who had a climbed a tree for a better view, fans to the left of the stage were screaming for a medic and waving their hands to get his attention. Scott launched into his song “No Bystanders.”

At 9:28 p.m., Daniels filmed staff performing chest compressions on an unresponsive man in the crowd.

“It was devastating because we saw people who were oblivious, enjoying the concert and celebrating, while right next to them, there’s somebody on the ground fighting for their life,” said Daniels, who attended the show with his 18-year-old son.

You can help us piece together this tragedy with video you took as a witness. Or, if you’re a first responder or concert promoter with information or documents that can shed light on what went wrong, here’s every conceivable way to get in touch with us.

The post We’re investigating what went wrong at the Travis Scott concert. Here’s how to help. appeared first on John Tedesco.

Isolating ourselves is the best way to guard against the coronavirus, but it’s more important than ever for journalists to make connections with real people like you during this crisis and listen to your stories.

Maybe we can’t meet in person for the foreseeable future. Maybe the only way we can communicate is through a Zoom video conference while my kids play Minecraft and yell insults at each other.

That’s OK.

Journalists at the Houston Chronicle created this online form to make it easier for you to contact us. If you feel comfortable talking to a reporter and sharing how COVID-19 has directly affected you, your job or your loved ones, please fill out this form and a Houston Chronicle reporter will get in touch with you.

Thanks for reading, and keep in touch.

The post Journalists want to hear your coronavirus story. Here’s how to reach the Houston Chronicle appeared first on John Tedesco.

If you want to know what really makes journalists tick, hanging out at an Investigative Reporters and Editors conference will restore your faith in humanity.

The whole point of this year’s massive gathering of journalists in Orlando, Florida was about finding truth — how to dig up facts, how to double and triple check them, and how to make sure a complex story is right.

It’s insanely interesting, inspiring stuff.

These tools and techniques are useful for anyone who cares about doing their own research. And they help show just how much work good journalists put into news stories at a time when a depressing number of people mistakenly view the media as purveyors of “fake news.”

I typed up my notes from the most interesting sessions I attended and included a few pointers I’ve learned over the years:

Online privacy and security

Protecting your documents and sources from prying eyes entails more than installing a privacy app on your phone and calling it a day. It requires thinking about what kind of risks you face online and what you can do about it. It’s a process.

Here are some basic steps you can take to protect yourself online, courtesy of BBC researcher Paul Myers and Mike Tigas of ProPublica:

1. Use different passwords for all your online accounts. That way, if one account gets hacked, your other accounts are still safe. Use a password manager such as LastPass to keep track of everything. It works on phones and computers.
2. Use two-step authentication in case a hacker does figure out your password.
3. Encrypt your phone and computer hard drives in case you lose them or authorities try to access them. Veracrypt is a free, open-source option. Both Apple and Android phones offer encryption as well.
4. Use messaging services that rely on strong, end-to-end encryption that prevents anyone from reading your stuff — including the people providing the service. Some options:

Signal is a smart phone app that encrypts messages and files and creates very little metadata — digital bread crumbs that reveal telling details such as when you sent a message and who received it. As long as all parties in a conversation use Signal, secure their phones, and use the self-destruct option in the message settings, Signal is about as secure as it gets. It can also encrypt phone and video calls.

WhatsApp also offers encryption. It’s more popular, but it creates more metadata. It’s owned by Facebook and no one really knows what Facebook does with that information. However, more people use it and it might not arouse as much suspicion as Signal.

ProtonMail is a Gmail alternative that also provides end-to-end encryption. While Google can see your email and provide those messages to authorities, ProtonMail can’t. It does, however, create metadata that is not encrypted, so be aware of that. I list ProtonMail on my contact page to encourage sources to protect their communications. 

Slack is a cool app but it’s not encrypted, as Gawker sadly learned. Two Slack alternatives that offer encryption are Peerio and Keybase.

Jitsi Meet is a Skype alternative that encrypts video calls.

5. Google is an amazing search engine but it tracks all your searches, which could be used against you if you’re ever sued or authorities obtain your Google data. Search engines such as StartPage and DuckDuckGo don’t track your searches at all.
6. Spend some time configuring your browser in the settings menu to protect your privacy online. Blocking third-party cookies, for example, helps prevent websites such as Facebook from tracking you across the web. Automatically deleting cookies every time you close your browser clears out unwanted trackers.
7. Use a VPN — a Virtual Private Network prevents your Internet Service Provider, such as AT&T, from seeing what websites you visit. You have to find a trustworthy one, though — avoid freebees. Go with a reputable, fee-based service.
8. Anonymize yourself by using the Tor browser. Good for conducting research when you don’t want the website to know your IP address.
9. Be careful of cloud providers such as Google Drive and DropBox. They can read your files, which means authorities or litigants can read your files, too, if they provide those companies with a search warrant or subpoena. I’m trying out an app called Syncthing that stores files between your devices without relying on a potentially vulnerable middle man. So far I like it. When I record an interview on my phone, the file magically appears on my work laptop, my home computer and any other devices I sync with it. Same thing with other types of files.
10. Install browser plugins that protect your online activities. Some good options include:

Https Everywhere: Provides a secure connection between you and a website.

uBlock Origin: A well-regarded adblocker, useful for blocking malicious ads.

Cookie AutoDelete: Deletes cookies from a web page whenever you close that tab.

Canvas Defender: Guards against browser fingerprinting, which is a way to track your browsing habits without the use of cookies.

Be careful what you download. Many browser extensions claiming to protect you are actually out to get you. There’s a huge difference between uBlock Origin (good) and plain-old uBlock (bad). Even good extensions can change owners and suddenly get all spammy without you knowing.

Further reading:

Tipsheet by Paul Myers of the BBC:

Tipsheet by Mike Tigas, news app developer at ProPublica: https://bitly.com/ire18-security

Useful privacy websites:

www.privacytools.io

Social media research and verifying viral content

When a big news story blows up, you’ll have to wade through social media, viral content and fake profiles, trying to make sense of it all. Here are some pointers courtesy of Paul Myers of the BBC, research wizard Henk van Ess, and Craig Silverman, official debunker at BuzzFeed.

Useful browser extensions and websites to verify content:

Reverse image searches and video verifier: See where an image has been posted in the past to check its origins. This is possible with Google Image Search (click and drag a photo from your hard drive to the search page), TinEye browser extension, and InVid photo and video analyzer.

Make screen grabs of controversial content in case it gets taken down, and save videos and photos. Download Facebook videos: https://www.fbdown.net/. Download YouTube videos: www.youtubeconvert.cc. Mozilla Firefox has a handy screen grabber built into the browser (click on the three dots in the URL bar and click on “take a screenshot”).

Check if a picture was photoshopped: http://www.fourandsix.com/

Check who is sharing content with CrowdTangle, a free extension owned by Facebook. It shows the top sharers — and who might be trafficking in fake news.

Check when a photo was created and other hidden details with Exif Data: http://exif.regex.info/exif.cgi

Analyze Twitter profiles: https://foller.me/

Another way to analyze Twitter profiles: https://tweetbeaver.com/index.php

Analyze a Facebook profile or page: https://stalkscan.com/

Another way to analyze profiles on Facebook: https://inteltechniques.com/OSINT/facebook.html. Also has ways to check out Twitter and Instagram accounts: https://inteltechniques.com

Analyze a viral video on YouTube: https://citizenevidence.org/2014/07/01/youtube-dataviewer/

Guide: How to spot fake news online: https://africacheck.org/factsheets/guide-how-to-spot-fakes-and-hoaxes-online/

List of more useful sites:

How to find out who’s sharing content and possibly spreading fake news

Check out CrowdTangle, mentioned above. You can also Google the ID number of YouTube videos and Instagram photos to see who’s sharing that material:

Another way to type this search: In Google, type:

[Full link to YouTube video] -site:youtube.com

[Full link to Instagram photo] -site:instagram.com

This shows you sites outside YouTube or Instagram that linked to that material.

How to find facebook pages or profiles that got taken down after a major news event:

1. Find complete name of person you’re interested in.
2. Conduct a site search for that name on google (site:facebook.com person’s name) to find the URL of the deleted page.
3. Then go to archive.is, paste url of facebook page to see if there’s an archived version.
4. You can also do keyword searches on Archive.is. Awesome way to find content.

How to hack Facebook:

Sometimes Facebook is finicky about search terms and it doesn’t always give you what you’re looking for. What then?

The good news is, every Facebook page, place and profile has a unique ID number. Sometimes that number is in the URL of the web page. If it’s not there, you can find it by checking https://findmyfbid.com.

Once you get the numeric ID code, go hack Facebook.

Modifying the URL in your browser a certain way tells Facebook to conduct a search query. For example, typing https://www.facebook.com/search/984197758297116/likers shows all the people who like the San Antonio Express-News Facebook page.

The basic formula is:

www.facebook.com / search / Facebook ID number of your choice / likers.

Type those terms with no spaces in the URL bar of your browser. You have to be logged into Facebook for this technique to work.

You can get really creative with this technique. “Likers” is just one parameter in a search query you can use. There’s also:

/visitors: Shows people who have checked in at a place. Example: Visitors at the San Antonio Express-News: https://www.facebook.com/search/984197758297116/visitors

/photos-of: Shows photos referring to that ID number. Example: Photos of San Antonio Express-News: https://www.facebook.com/search/984197758297116/photos-of

/photos-in: Shows photos taken at a place: Example: Photos in San Antonio Express-News: https://www.facebook.com/search/984197758297116/photos-in

/stories-topic: Shows discussions mentioning the account tied to that ID number. Example: https://www.facebook.com/search/984197758297116//stories-topic

Check out more hacks here: http://researchclinic.net/facebook.html

You can also combine searches.

Let’s say you’re assigned a story about the Beatles and you’re looking for San Antonians to interview. Find the ID number of the Beatles’ official Facebook page, find the ID number of San Antonio, Texas, and you can write a query that shows you people living in San Antonio who like the Beatles.

San Antonio ID: 110297742331680 (I found this by typing “San Antonio, Texas” in Facebook, clicking on the first “place” result, and finding the ID number in the URL.

Official Beatles Page ID: 69116329538

Plug those numbers into this query, with no spaces:

www.facebook.com/ search / ID_number / likers / Place _ID_Number / residents / intersect

Like this:

Boom.

Again, the reason why this might be necessary is because if you type “Residents of San Antonio, Texas who like the Beatles,” sometimes the results don’t show a list of what you want. I tried typing “Residents of San Antonio, Texas who like Phil Hardberger Park” and it didn’t show a list of people. But it does show a list if you configure the URL correctly with the right ID numbers:

Here’s another more user-friendly resource to play around with some of Facebook’s graph searches: http://graph.tips/beta/

Further reading from Paul Myers, a researcher at the BBC:

http://researchclinic.net/facebook.html

http://researchclinic.net/investigative-tools.html

http://www.researchclinic.net/graph.html

http://researchclinic.net/facebooksecrets/index.html

Craig Silverman tipsheet:

How to quickly background people you plan to quote in a story

We quote strangers every day in the newspaper, often without taking the time to verify they are who they say they are. How many times have we covered a weekend story, interviewed a bunch of people, and assumed they had no skeletons in the closet that can come back to bite us?

Kate Howard of the Kentucky Center for Investigative Reporting wrote a feature story about a guy without knowing his criminal history, and it turned out his criminal history was extremely relevant. She only found out about it after the story ran and the victim called her.

Kate argues we should all be doing quick-and-dirty background checks on everyone we write about, no matter how innocuous the story, so we don’t get blindsided. We need to make sure we know more about the people we’re highlighting in the paper.

Here are some of her tips:

Google the hell out of everybody in different ways. Try variations of their names and scroll past the first page of search results. Same thing with social media — check them on Linkedin and Facebook for sure, make sure they are who they say they are.

Check newspaper archives, we might have written about them before.

Court records: Parties involved in local lawsuits in Bexar County are easily searchable at https://apps.bexar.org/dklitsearch/search.aspx. The search also covers criminal cases.

Professional licenses: If someone tells you he’s an engineer, you can confirm that by looking up engineering licenses online. The same goes for other licensed professions, such as real estate agents, doctors, nurses, etc.

Look out for fake names. If someone identifies himself as “Hugh Jass,” be suspicious.

Further reading:

Kate’s tipsheet:

tinyurl.com/IREbackgrounding

People finders and other cool web tools

Pipl and Spokeo were frequently mentioned at IRE as useful tools to find phone numbers and social media profiles.

Truecaller boasts a searchable database of billions of phone numbers. Truecaller snagged those numbers from people who downloaded its app and shared all their contacts. It’s a good way to find out the name behind a phone number, just be careful when you sign up for it. Try setting up a ghost email account so your personal info isn’t collected.

Skype is a great people finder. If you have an email it lets you find the right person, not copy cats. Same thing with Facebook — try searching for emails to find profiles.

GeoLocate search: Allows you to conduct radius searches in Google maps with multiple keywords. Can be useful if you need to figure out where a photograph was taken. You can do things things like, “Show me all bookstores in downtown San Antonio that are within 50 meters of a coffee shop.”

Sqoop: Set up customized searches for corporate and federal court records. Free for journalists.

Court Listener: Free, full-text searches of many federal court records. Created by the makers of the “RECAP” browser extension that alerts you to free court records.

iFOIA: Good resource by the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press with input by media lawyers to walk you through the FOIA process.

OpenCorporates: Searchable, crowd-sourced documents of corporations:

Charity Navigator: Features financial evaluations of charities worth at least $1 million:

Focus on solutions, not just problems

Tina Rosenberg, co-founder of the Solutions Journalism Network, offered some good reminders about the importance of looking for solutions to the problems we write about:

This technique strengthens our stories and prods officials to take action. Here’s an example from her tipsheet:

“The Cleveland Plain Dealer had done several major series on lead paint. They showed in convincing detail how the city was failing its children. But these series didn’t produce impact.

“What did bring major change was a 2015 solutions series: “Toxic Neglect.” The paper did a traditional investigation, looking at the lead problem, and the city’s failures, through the lens of race. But its real focus was the solutions component, showing how Rochester was doing a better job overall and how neighbors such as Grand Rapids and Akron had each solved pieces of the puzzle.

“Lead paint was seen as such an entrenched problem that city officials could dismiss “Cleveland is failing its children” as unavoidable. But “Cleveland is failing while its neighbors are succeeding” was a different message,one profoundly embarrassing to city and state officials.”

How to handle difficult stories

Investigative reporters Karen de Sá at the San Francisco Chronicle and T. Christian Miller at ProPublica gave some good advice about how to interview sources who suffered trauma and officials who fear exposure. The main message was to be transparent, be up front about where you’re going with a story, and give them every opportunity to respond.

This is usually helpful no matter what kind of story you’re working on. When I’m working on an unflattering story about someone this is what I usually do:

• Contact them as soon as feasible in the reporting process — not at the last minute before we go to press. In broad strokes, I tell them the gist of why I’m contacting them and the direction of my story, and I’d like to talk to them about it. I hope this starts a dialogue where I can continue to call them as I continue the reporting process and new questions arise.
• If they don’t respond I try to send them a message with the broad outlines of the story and my top questions. Sometimes this provokes a response. The main idea here is that no one should ever be blindsided by what they read in the paper, and you want to make sure you know about any disputed details.
• As soon as a story runs online, I send out a link to the main people in the article and ask if they have any feedback or questions and to please stay in touch for future stories. This tells them a) we care about being accurate and b) we’re not doing a hit-and-run piece.

Staying organized

Notes template: You can use the navigation pane in Word or Google Docs to create sections in your notes for interviews, questions, contacts, etc. This helps you avoid the chaos of disorganized notes. This is what I use:

Other useful tools to stay organized while reporting and writing a story are in this presentation by Sarah Hutchins of IRE and Taylor Blatchford of NICAR, bit.ly/IRE18-organization, and in helpful tips by Pulitzer Prize winner Leon Dash:

Evernote: Key feature is that Evernote lets you search everything — including text in images. It’s your vast, personal archive. Very handy on deadline when you’re trying to factcheck a factoid in a stack of documents. Two other apps mentioned at IRE that help with piles of documents are Everlaw and DEVONthink.

oTranscribe: An efficient way to transcribe your interviews. Everything happens in the browser so you don’t have to switch back and forth between your recording and your document.

Otter: Helpful transcription tool that’s free for the first 600 minutes every month. Click on a section of the transcript to hear that exact part of the recording. Not 100 percent accurate, but nothing is, and this helps you quickly find key sections of long interviews. Trint is a similar service that I’ve tried in the past and it’s been a lifesaver at times.

Note taking: Recommended by New York Times reporter Ellen Gabler, try creating a spreadsheet of all your telephone interviews. Columns can include the date, phone number of the source, topic of the story, and text of the interview. Sarah Hutchins recommends typing notes in Word and pasting them into your spreadsheet. All your interviews are in one place, and you can sort and filter by topic to find what you need quickly.

Document organizing: Another spreadsheet idea — create a spreadsheet of all the documents you gather.

Processing notes: Leon Dash said when he works on a project, he goes through all his interview transcripts, make notes of the key parts, then writes his book or story from those notes.

Scrivener: Popular writing tool that lets you organize sections of a story and see your notes as your write. Some writers swear by this app.

FOIA Machine: Provides contact info of FOIA officers automatically and offers boilerplate information for FOIA requests.

IFTTT: If This, Then That lets you create “applets” that join different services together.

For example, you can download all the tweets of a source you’re following on Twitter to a Google spreadsheet to make sure you never miss anything.

Best practices: Bookmark notebooks with post it notes, marking each interview. Lets you easily find them. On your computer, create digital filing cabinets for email and digital files. Create subfolders in similar ways on all your devices. Use dates in file names for computer documents, come up with a naming system. Avoid writing “finalfinal_final_draft2.” Write something like “Draft_JT_06252018”

Final thought: Don’t use all these tools all at once. Try each one out and give them a real chance to see if they work for you.

The post Insanely awesome journalism tips from IRE’s 2018 investigative reporting conference appeared first on John Tedesco.

City of San Antonio awards developers $10 million in incentives for luxury condo tower — $173,400 for each unit | The San Antonio Express-News

A city program to encourage people to live in downtown San Antonio is spending $10 million in tax incentives and fee waivers on the Arts Residences and Thompson San Antonio hotel, a 20-story luxury tower of hotel rooms and condos. One City Council critic calls it a “ludicrous” amount of money to spend on housing that few residents can afford. Story by Richard Webner

Standoff: How the Dallas SWAT team cornered and killed the July 7 police shooter | The Dallas Morning News

Hours of interviews with Dallas SWAT officers revealed new details about how police cornered and eventually killed gunman Micah Xavier Johnson, who was on a mission to kill police on July 7, 2016. Told in a narrative that puts readers in the shoes of SWAT officers engaged in a deadly, close-range shootout with Johnson, the story shows what they dealt with and how they came up with the idea to put a bomb on a remote-controlled robot to take out Johnson. Story by Jamie Thompson

Caught on Camera: TxDOT dumping roadkill, waste and more | KXAN-TV

A hidden-camera investigation by KXAN revealed that Texas Department of Transportation employees used state equipment to dump roadkill and debris near a state highway. KXAN also discovered oily sludge seeping into the soil and running down the back of the dump into a drainage area within the sensitive Edwards Aquifer recharge zone. The station’s findings sparked an inquiry by the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality. Story by David Barer, Jody Barr and Josh Hinkle

‘They’re just setting those babies up for the penitentiary’: How minor offenses feed overcrowding at Houston youth jail | The Texas Tribune

Kids across Texas are getting in less trouble with the law — yet Harris County is locking up more juveniles. The Texas Tribune analyzed county data and found that a rising number of offenses were for minor violations that shouldn’t have landed kids behind bars in the first place. Story by Neena Satija

Sheriff media consultant works without contract | The Victoria Advocate

The Victoria County Sheriff’s Office paid media consultant William Ward Wyatt more than $68,000 in fees without any contract or document laying out his duties. The payments occurred during a period when the sheriff’s office failed to get timely information to the public about serious crimes. Story by Jessica Priest

Assisted living facility hit with violations after Trouble Shooters begin investigating | News 4 San Antonio

State officials investigated Amber Oaks, an assisted living community for the elderly in San Antonio, after New 4 San Antonio obtained photos and video from inside the facility. The TV station learned that a rat had bitten one resident, and another elderly woman had resorted to squashing bed bugs herself. Story by Jaie Avila

Dallas City Council candidates accepted $78,000 from people tied to bus agency bribery case | The Dallas Morning News and KXAS-TV

The FBI is investigating a company that pumped $78,000 into the campaigns of 15 Dallas City Council candidates, some of whom said they didn’t know who was writing the campaign checks. Story by Miles Moffeit, Tristan Hallman and Holly K. Hacker

New Details Alleged in Scheme to Make Millions Off First Border Wall in Texas | The Texas Tribune and ProPublica

Court records are revealing new details about a $232 million project to build a fence on the Texas border and rehabilitate aging levies — while paying companies tied to Godfrey Garza Jr., Hidalgo County’s drainage director. Story by Kiah Collier and T. Christian Miller

Did I miss a good story? Contact me or leave a comment below. Don’t forget to sign up for blog updates and check out more watchdog journalism from the great state of Texas.

The post Must reads: Texas watchdog journalism roundup for Feb 5, 2018 appeared first on John Tedesco.

Biting dogs are a vicious problem in San Antonio | The San Antonio Express-News

Two dog owners were on trial last week after their pit bull named “Bully” viciously mauled their neighbor, who lost part of her arm in the attack. The San Antonio Express-News examined gaps in the city’s Animal Care Services system and obtained public data to map where aggressive dogs are located in San Antonio and where they’ve attacked people. Story by Melissa Fletcher Stoeljte, Vincent T. Davis and Luke Whyte

UT declined to sanction professor who pleaded guilty to violent felony | The Austin American-Statesman

After the Austin American-Statesman revealed a professor pleaded guilty to a criminal charge of strangling his girlfriend but kept his job, officials at the University of Texas announced they’re reviewing their disciplinary policy. Story by Ralph K.M. Haurwitz and Ryan Autullo

Turner aide who used city resources for personal business resigns | The Houston Chronicle

Mayor Sylvester Turner’s press secretary, Darian Ward, resigned after the Houston Chronicle revealed she sent or received 5,000 emails discussing her personal business on her city account. Ward tried to prevent the newspaper from obtaining the messages, claiming they were confidential. Story by Rebecca Elliott and Mike Morris

ICE Arrested Nearly Three Times as Many Immigrants During Last Year’s Austin Raid Than Previously Reported | The Texas Observer

A raid last year by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents in Austin resulted in far more arrests than previously reported, according to an internal tally obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request made by the Texas Observer. The federal agency took nearly a year to release the documents. Story by Gus Bova

Castle Hills councilman accused of pressuring staff to move his street near top of repair list | KSAT-12

Records obtained by the KSAT Defenders show that Castle Hills Councilman Douglas Gregory was accused of pressuring city employees to move his street to the top of the city’s repair list. A former city manager called Gregory a “liar and a cad” after Gregory denied the allegations. Story by Dillon Collier

Did I miss a good story? Contact me or leave a comment below. Don’t forget to sign up for blog updates and check out more watchdog journalism from the great state of Texas.

The post Must reads: Texas watchdog journalism roundup for Jan. 28, 2018 appeared first on John Tedesco.

If you Google “Sutherland Springs church shooting,” you’d have to wade through 1.4 million search engine results to read everything about the worst mass shooting in modern Texas history. We’ve been drowning in real news, fake news and everything in between.

How are we supposed to make sense of it all?

On Wednesday morning, I thought we might have enough information about the shooting to sift through the verified facts and write a detailed, chronological narrative about what happened.

A team of San Antonio Express-News reporters had spent the past three days in Sutherland Springs, doing the difficult work of interviewing witnesses and trying to figure out exactly what happened. Good Samaritans Stephen Willeford, who shot the gunman, and Johnnie Langendorff, who helped Willeford pursue him, had provided detailed accounts to other media outlets. I thought we could tell the story through the eyes of the survivors and the heroes.

Related: Contact John Tedesco at the Houston Chronicle

We also knew the killer, Devin Patrick Kelley, had been kicked out of the Air Force for abusing his wife and infant stepson and wasn’t supposed to be able to buy firearms — but the Air Force had never reported the domestic abuse case to the FBI, which meant Kelley could pass criminal background checks.

If ever there was a time for narrative journalism, this was it.

I emailed my editors Wednesday morning offering to cobble together a long narrative telling readers everything we knew at that point. My boss, projects editor David Sheppard, told me to go for it.

For any writers tackling a complicated story, the best advice I can offer is to start putting words on the blank page as soon as possible. If you don’t know where to start, that’s OK. Write details from your notes that you know for sure will be going in the story. Flesh out an outline. As your story grows you’ll move things around, figuring out how it all fits together. You finally reach a point where everything gels.

Working from home to avoid distractions, I spent Wednesday and Thursday writing, reading and transcribing interviews, figuring out what information we had and what else we needed.

It’s always a challenge trying to decide how to begin a story. But I quickly found my lede in notes taken by Guillermo Contreras, our federal courts reporter who had interviewed a witness, Lorenzo Flores.

Flores had been standing outside a Valero gas station across the street with his girlfriend, Terrie Smith, when he spotted a man in black tactical gear holding a military-style rifle standing outside the church before the first shots were fired. Flores told Contreras:

“I see this man and he had a high-powered rifle. And I had a bad feeling about it. I said, ‘Terrie, look at that.’ And the guy’s like making up his mind on whether to cross the street or not. Finally, I see him walk across the street from the church. And so, I’m like, there’s something wrong here. I had a bad feeling.”

Those details clicked with me. I chose that moment to begin our 3,400-word article about the tragedy at Sutherland Springs and how two men tried to stop it. The Express-News published it online Friday and it ran in today’s paper.

It’s just one story among thousands.

But I hope it helps make sense of the unthinkable.

The post Making sense of the unthinkable in Sutherland Springs appeared first on John Tedesco.

Investigators: Gym owner started deadly blaze that killed firefighter Scott Deem | The San Antonio Express-News

Local officials have released few details about a deadly blaze that killed San Antonio firefighter Scott Deem. But an arrest warrant affidavit obtained by the Express-News reveals that arson suspect Emond Javor Johnson was plagued by financial problems and confessed to starting the fire to get out of a monthly $2,500 lease at the Spartan Gym. Authorities arrested Johnson Wednesday. Story by Emilie Eaton, John Tedesco, Caleb Downs, Fares Sabawi and Kelsey Bradshaw

The Wall | USA Today Network

More than 30 reporters and photographers interviewed migrants, farmers, families, tribal members — even a human smuggler — to examine the feasibility of President Donald Trump’s border wall. “In this report, you can watch aerial video of every foot of the border, explore every piece of fence, even stand at the border in virtual reality.”

Harvey laid bare lack of resources, training at Houston Fire Department | The Houston Chronicle

When Houston firefighters rushed into Tropical Storm Harvey’s currents in late August, they were hobbled by a lack of resources, old equipment and a shortage of manpower ready to go when the storm hit, according to a Chronicle review of internal reports and emails, and dozens of interviews with firefighters and other officials. “Internal reports show fire department leaders should have known they weren’t prepared for a catastrophic hurricane.” Story by St. John Barned-Smith

Texas official after Harvey: The ‘Red Cross was not there’ | The Texas Tribune and ProPublica

“The Red Cross’ anemic response to Hurricane Harvey left officials in several Texas counties seething, emails obtained by ProPublica show. In some cases, the Red Cross simply failed to show up as it promised it would.” Story by Justin Elliott, Jessica Huseman and Decca Muldowney

Police responded to his 911 call for help. He died. What happened to Tony Timpa? | The Dallas Morning News

Dallas media organizations spent more than a year examining Tony Timpa’s mysterious death and fighting for public records from the city of Dallas and Dallas County after Timpa’s family complained that police were stonewalling. They discovered that Timpa, unarmed and frightened, died in the custody of police officers as they mocked him. Story by Cary Aspinwall

Kilgore College VP was told quit or be fired, files show | The Longview News-Journal

At the time of his June resignation, records obtained by the News-Journal reveal that former Kilgore College Vice President of Finance Duane McNaney was set to be fired over performance issues and “serious misconduct” — problems that weren’t previously known until the newspaper filed an open records request. Story by Meredith Shamburger

Amid staff exodus at health agency, some say chief has political agenda | The Texas Tribune

Dozens of experienced senior staff members have left Texas’ health and human services agency, saying morale has sunk after the arrival of Executive Director Charles Smith, a longtime ally of Texas Gov. Greg Abbott. “Current and former employees attribute the exodus to widespread dissatisfaction with the executive commissioner, whom they say lacks technical knowledge of the agency and pushes a political agenda backed by the governor.” Story by Edgar Walters

Did I miss a good story? Contact me or leave a comment below. Don’t forget to sign up for blog updates and check out more watchdog journalism from the great state of Texas.

The post Texas watchdog journalism roundup: Arson, the Red Cross and Trump’s wall appeared first on John Tedesco.

Fifty-one inches: Terror, heartbreak and heroism as five souls brave the worst storm in U.S. history | Houston Chronicle

A gripping narrative that focuses on the plight of five people caught in the path of Tropical Storm Harvey. Story by Mike Hixenbaugh, David Hunn and Mark Collette

As Houston grew, officials ignored ‘once-in-a-lifetime’ chance to spare thousands from flooding | The Dallas Morning News

“My embarrassment is that I knew enough that this was going to happen. And I was not smart enough, bold enough to fight the system, the politics, and stop it.” Story by Steve Thompson

Houston’s Floodwaters Are Tainted, Testing Shows | The New York Times

Scientific tests paid for by The New York Times found troubling levels of E. coli, lead, arsenic and heavy metals that wound up in homes. Story by Sheila Kaplan and Jack Healy

Government ill-equipped to monitor industrial plants damaged by Hurricane Harvey | The Houston Chronicle

“More than a dozen Texas chemical and refining plants reported damaged storage tanks, ruptured containment systems and malfunctioning pressure relief valves as a result of Hurricane Harvey, portending safety problems that might not become apparent for months or years, according to a Houston Chronicle review of regulatory filings.” Story by Mark Collette and Matt Dempsey

Did I miss a good story? Contact me or leave a comment below. Don’t forget to sign up for blog updates and check out more watchdog journalism from the great state of Texas.

The post Texas watchdog journalism roundup: The impact of Tropical Storm Harvey appeared first on John Tedesco.