At a time when it feels like facts don’t matter, there’s a sliver of good news: 

Investigative journalists are still writing stories that help us understand a complicated world.

Here are the latest examples of watchdog stories in Texas that uncovered hidden facts and held officials accountable.

Build, flood, rebuild: flood insurance’s expensive cycle | The Houston Chronicle

“The National Flood Insurance Program, designed to protect Americans from catastrophic floods, has failed in almost every way, encouraging people to buy and build in flood-prone areas while increasing the cost and magnitude of disasters.” Story by David Hunn, Ryan Maye Handy and James Osborne

3 Dallas cops indicted in death of unarmed man who had called 911 for help | The Dallas Morning News

After the Dallas Morning News spent more than a year investigating how a frantic, unarmed man named Tony Timpa died at the hands of police, a grand jury indicted three officers on misdemeanor charges of deadly conduct. Officers mocked Timpa, who was handcuffed, as he died. “Timpa’s death was ruled a homicide, and the cause was sudden cardiac death due to the toxic effects of cocaine and the stress associated with physical restraint.” Story by Tasha Tsiaperas

‘Want to F*ck With Me Tonight’: Texas Capitol Horror Stories | The Daily Beast

Two Democratic state lawmakers from Texas, Borris Miles and Carlos Uresti, are accused of groping and forcibly kissing women and making lurid cat-calls. Both men deny the allegations. “Women in Texas’ statehouse created their own online whisper network to help protect themselves — more than a year before the bombshell allegations about movie mogul Harvey Weinstein.” Story by Olivia Messer

ICYMI: This was all about racism | Folo Media

A four-part series examines the lasting effects of racism, deed restrictions and educational disparities in San Antonio. “When you develop a school finance system that’s based on local property values at the exact same time that you’re explicitly segregating neighborhoods on race, then you can’t act surprised 50 years later — 70 years later — when things are unequal,” said analyst Chandra Villanueva. Story by Matt Worthington and Bekah McNeel

Builders Said Their Homes Were Out of a Flood Zone. Then Harvey Came. | The New York Times

“A New York Times examination found that in the years leading up to Hurricane Harvey, the developers of The Woodlands had used a wrinkle in the federal flood-mapping system — along with many dump trucks’ worth of dirt — to lift dozens of lots out of the area officially deemed prone to flooding. What they had done, in effect, was create gerrymandered maps of risk.” Story by John Schwartz, James Glanz and Andrew W. Lehren

Suddenly disabled, unable to work and need benefits? Prepare for financial ruin first | The Fort Worth Star-Telegram

“In Fort Worth, and across the nation, the system is backlogged to the point of near-absurdity. Local applicants can wait up to two years for a hearing before a judge, with many cities facing longer waits.” Story by Jeff Caplan

Diversions and disguises: Behind Austin’s city manager search | The Austin American-Statesman

“To dodge reporters, consultants suggested the finalists to be Austin’s next city manager don wigs, pretend to be tourists or possibly even wear Halloween masks after American-Statesman reporters managed to identify several candidates during the city’s top-secret search for its next leader.” Story by Philip Jankowski

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 Dec. 10, 2017 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.

Paul Bradshaw wrote an interesting review of Living Stories, Google’s vision of how news should be read, shared and discussed online.

Related: What’s Evernote for? How about making a vast, searchable archive of all your files

Partnering with the New York Times and the Washington Post, Google has created an experiment that tries to move beyond the limitations of typical newspaper Web sites. Living Stories puts relevant articles in one place, so it’s easier for readers to find stories about a topic they’re interested in. Looks promising.

The post Living Stories: Google’s new method of packaging news online appeared first on John Tedesco.

These so-called virtual goods, like a $1 illustration of a Champagne bottle on Facebook or the $2.50 Halloween costume in the online game Sorority Life, are no more than a collection of pixels on a Web page.

But it is quickly becoming commonplace for people to spend a few dollars on them to get ahead in an online game or to give a friend a gift on a social network.

There are several companies that sell virtual goods — one of them being Zynga. The Times story mentioned Zynga and quoted its CEO. But the story paid scant attention to recent blog posts by TechCrunch’s Michael Arrington, who revealed Zynga was making gobs of money from unwary people, often kids, who unwittingly subscribe to deals they don’t want.

The omission outraged Fake Steve Jobs, AKA Dan Lyons, who claimed the story is Exhibit A in the case of the dying mainstream media:

Um, New York Times? If you guys are still wondering why people are dropping their subscriptions and getting their news from blogs instead of you — this is why.

And to all those people who go around wringing their hands and saying what are we going to do when the “real newspapers” all die and we have to get our news from Gawker and HuffPo and TechCrunch? Friends, I think we’re going to be just fine.

The usual suspects such as Techdirt applauded this post. But they all missed the point.

The lament about the decline of newspapers is not really about the loss of a physical paper. It’s about the loss of institutions that pay people a full-time salary to look under rocks and share important stories with their communities.

It’s awesome TechCrunch uncovered the shenanigans at Zynga. Other blogs like the Consumerist and The Smoking Gun have produced fantastic, public-service journalism here and here.

Related: Telling stories with data: Police chases and drug smugglers on the Texas-Mexico border

But such in-depth coverage from these blogs is uncommon, even though they are among the top-ranked blogs on Technorati and actually make decent money. The vast majority of bloggers don’t enjoy the luxury of a sizable paycheck. For most bloggers, it’s a hobby. And it’s difficult, if not impossible, to do the grunt-work of journalism on a part-time basis.

I would love to hear Fake Steve Jobs explain how a blogger with a day job is going to find the time to stake out a grand jury at the courthouse, or dig up details about a crooked land deal being hatched at City Hall.

Who’s going to work on these local stories for readers in San Antonio — TechCrunch?

Newspapers, despite all their faults and foibles, are still the ones doing most of this valuable work.

Fake Steve Jobs fell for the old fallacy of newspapers vs. bloggers. I’m sure I could find plenty of stories where the Times routinely scooped TechCrunch. But this kind of tit-for-tat tally entirely misses the point. The real problem is finding new economic models that support full-time journalism. That’s why it’s interesting to watch experiments like the Texas Tribune, ProPublica and nonprofit news organizations in other parts of the country. These organizations are paying people to work full-time on important stories.

Fake Steve Jobs — that’s the real issue.

(Photo credit: Tripsspace)

The post Fake Steve Jobs misses the real point appeared first on John Tedesco.

Awesome video by the New York Times’ Nicholas Kristof, who offers some sound reporting advice for all journalists and bloggers.

True, most of us will never need fake wallets or interpreters or blow darts.

But doing everything you can do verify someone’s story — no matter how sympathetic they are — is important whether you’re covering City Hall or a humanitarian crisis.

The post How to not die in a war zone appeared first on John Tedesco.

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 have given a better answer to Jason Jones’ question about why “aged” news is better than “real” news.

Jones handed assistant managing editor Rick Berke a copy of the Times and asked: “Give me one thing in there that happened today.” Berke got flustered, which was understandable with the cameras on him. The correct answer was: Nothing. Nothing in the paper happened today — but look at all the in-depth stories in the newspaper that connected dots and explained to readers what was really going on in the world.

A prime example: the Pulitzer Prize-winning stories by David Barstow, who won the prize for “his tenacious reporting that revealed how some retired generals, working as radio and television analysts, had been co-opted by the Pentagon to make its case for the war in Iraq, and how many of them also had undisclosed ties to companies that benefited from policies they defended.”

That was “aged” news. But so was Watergate. It was important information that took months to uncover and needed to be told.

Watchdog journalism keeps newspapers relevant. Yeah, it’s aged. But those are some of the best stories out there.

The post The Daily Show, the New York Times, and why ‘aged’ news is good appeared first on John Tedesco.