A pipeline explosion is the kind of classic breaking-news story that journalists have been racing to cover for generations.
Read Full PostViktoria Sundqvist got off to a good start in her new job as investigations editor for the Middletown Press and Register Citizen in Torrington, Conn.: She won a DFMie on her first project.
Read Full PostOne of the most important measures of investigative journalism is impact. Well, how’s this for impact? Reporting by Zahira Torres and Hayley Kappes of the El Paso Times on cheating in the El Paso School District led to the state education commissioner ordering the removal of the school board.
Read Full PostMobile home owners in Marin, California, may want to thank reporter Nels Johnson.
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Sometimes ‘community engagement’ is more meaningful than just getting traction on social media. In ways that many papers don’t, the Pottstown Mercury understands this organizationally, as they’ve just wound down their third community-oriented project of the year with the Town Square bloggers.* This most recent fundraiser resulted from a visit by Pottstown YWCA staff to one of the paper’s regular community bloggers meetings. The YWCA was in need of additional funding for its literacy education program, the staff members had told the bloggers, and from that an idea for a literacy-themed challenge was borne.
For every person who took a Literacy Pledge and signed up for a YWCA email list using a form on Google Docs, an anonymous donor would give $1 to the YWCA. The Mercury’s Town Square bloggers even wrote up posts to promote the fundraiser. As community engagement editor Diane Hoffman noted to us, the pledge form included an option that let readers identify which blog had prompted them to take the pledge — by tracking referrals, Hoffman and others at the paper could see which blogs generated the most emails and, consequently, donations. In total, the Read and Write for Literacy Campaign raised $1,057 for the YWCA.
* Wondering what the first two community projects of the year were? A food drive over Lent and a community clean-up initiative this summer.
With a job title that probably didn’t even exist five years ago — Community Engagement Producer — you might be unsure of what folks like Holly Mahaffey do on a day-to-day basis. However, this example, sent in by her colleague Lisa Jonaitis, should help you understand how Digital First Media’s focus on community engagement can directly impact a publication’s journalistic bottom-line.
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Andy Stettler, executive editor at the Main Line Times, brought to our attention a very smart community engagement tip — one uniquely fit to legacy media outlets with deep roots in their coverage areas.
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Larry Altman’s coverage of this story, which spanned a three-year period, began when an elderly resident of Lomita (a town in the Los Angeles area) called the Daily Breeze to report that she didn’t know where her neighbor was — that she was missing, and her husband, a local chef, wouldn’t talk about it.
Altman kept on the story, facing much resistance from the principal man involved, and saw the case turn into a homicide investigation following an interview he held at the suspect’s restaurant. Ultimately, not only was the chef found guilty of the crime, but Altman was first to report that he had also cooked his wife’s remains to dispose of the evidence.
During a six-month investigation of a proposed $123 million seawater desalination facility in Santa Cruz, Sentinel staff writer J.M. Brown interviewed more than 60 water officials, scientists, utility customers and others to provide a deep look inside the financial, environmental and political implications of the city’s plan.
The amount of time Brown spent learning about the issue was readily evident throughout the package; it was clear the journalism was produced from a position of knowledge and authority. Complimented by a four-part video series and a live chat, Brown’s coverage was accessible to readers with varying amounts of background knowledge, as he also produced an easy-to-read ‘What we found’ breakout feature to accompany the package.
Investigative reporter Tom Peele spent more than two years building a database of public employee salaries and benefits. Last month provided Tom a chance to show the San Jose Mercury’s web and print audience just what that database can do.
In a time of dwindling newsrooms, the significant energy and resources put into this project helped expose a practice of ‘double-dipping’ among public employees who drew pensions from one municipality while receiving salaries from another.
