JUNE 5-8 REGISTRATION You can register for this conference online at www.ire.org/training/miami08. To attend this conference, HOST: you must be an IRE member The Miami Herald through July 1, 2008. and El Nuevo Herald Memberships are nonrefundable. Early-bird registration closes May 19. e best in the busine will gather for panels REGISTRATION FEE: workshops and special presentations about (main conference days) $165 Professional/Academic/ Associate/Retiree covering public safety, courts, national $100 Student security, the military, busine, education, CAR DAY – optional: Thursday, June 5 (requires additional fee) local government and much more. $50 Professional/Academic/ Associate/Retiree $35 Student Visit ww.ire.org/training/miami08 BLUES BASH for more information and updates. Thursday, June 5 at 7 p.m. Advance tickets are $20. IRE offers several programs to help women, members of minority Ticket prices on site, groups, college students and journalists from small news organiza- if available, will be higher. tions attend the conference. Fellowships typically provide a one-year Limit of 2 tickets per registrant. membership, registration fees, and reimbursement for hotel and travel costs. See details at www.ire.org/training/fellowships.html. Conference Hotel Apply by April 7 for the Miami conference. contact conference InterContinental Miami If you If you have hotel or general conference questions www.ichmiami.com coordinator Stephanie Sinn, [email protected], 573-882-8969.Green, membership 100 Chopin Plaza have registration questions, please contact John Miami, FL 33131 coordinator, [email protected] or 573-882-2772 2008 IRE CONFERENCE CONTENTSFEATURES THE IRE JOURNAL 18 - 28 MONEY IN POLITICS 2008 TABLE OF Contents 19 BIG SPENDERS JANUARY /FEBRUARY 2008 Follow the fundraising trends up and down the ballot 4 Project renews pledge By Derek Willis to keep murdered The New York Times journalist’s story alive By James Grimaldi 21 FAVORS IN FINE PRINT The Washington Post, Defense spending bill packed IRE Board President with $11.8B in earmarks By David Heath 6 Investigative books of 2007 The Seattle Times By Steve Weinberg The IRE Journal 23 BUNDLE OF TROUBLE Journalists untangle the story of Norman Hsu 12 REMEMBERING IDA TARBELL By Kate Rainey Standard Oil investigation set out to The IRE Journal capture an era—and readers By Kathleen Brady 26 CAMPAIGN oney RESOURCES By Kate Rainey m i 14 MERCURY CONNECTION: n State tests water and fish but The IRE Journal not people who eat the catch By Tony Bartelme and Doug Pardue The (Charleston, S.C.) Post and Courier p MEASURING MERCURY o EPA pollution data worth a look, flaws and all l s By Paul Overberg i c USA Today t i 29 HIDDEN VIOLATIONS One reporter tackles national ABOUT THE COVER comparison of teacher Find out what’s at stake for misconduct cases By Scott Reeder voters by pooling everyday Small Newspaper Group, investigative resources with Springfield, Ill., Bureau campaign finance data to cover the 2008 elections. 30 Scouting Salaries Utah Boy Scouts execs earn high pay Cover illustration: By Lee Davidson The (Salt Lake City) Deseret By Wendy Gray Morning News The IRE Journal 32 The Chauncey Bailey Project: Media coalition reinvents Cover stories: Arizona Project model Pages 18-28 By Thomas Peele Bay Area News Group JANUARY /FEBRUARY 2008 3 FEATURES THE IRE JOU R NAL FROM THE IRE OFFICES VOLUME 31 NUMBER 1 MA N AGI N G EDITOR & Project renews pledge PUBLICATIONS COORDI N ATOR Megan Means to keep murdered ART DIRECTOR Wendy Gray journalist’s story alive JAMES GRIMALDI SE N IOR CO N TRIBUTI N G EDITOR THE WASHING T ON POS T , Steve Weinberg IRE BOARD PRESIDENT CO N TRIBUTI N G LEGAL EDITOR David Smallman y now you probably know the story of Chauncey Bailey, the editor of the Oakland Post, B who was gunned down as he walked to work in August. Police believe he was murdered STORY EDITOR Joanna Imm because of his investigation into a business called Your Black Muslim Bakery. The parallels to the slaying of Don Bolles are chilling. Bolles was a founding member EDITORIAL ASSOCIATE of IRE, and his murder by a car bomb in 1976 led to the Arizona Project, in which a team of Kate Rainey IRE members from across the country continued and expanded his investigation into public corruption and organized crime. Bob Greene, the Newsday investigative editor who led the team, called the Arizona Project IRE an insurance policy: No journalist’s work could be stopped by a bullet or a bomb. IRE EXECUTI V E DIRECTOR Every insurance policy has a premium. On Aug. 2, 2007, that premium came due. Mark Horvit Two prominent Bay Area nonprofit organizations, New America Media and the Maynard Institute, sent out a clarion call for an array of journalists to continue Bailey’s work. The effort BOARD OF DIRECTORS was borne out of a shock at the lack of coverage by national mainstream news outlets and calls PRESIDE N T for an investigation modeled after the Arizona Project. The Chauncey Bailey Project is a clearinghouse for information and home for more than James V. Grimaldi, The Washington Post two dozen editors, reporters, students and news organizations. It is an unusual collaboration VICE PRESIDE N T of journalists who are picking up where Bailey left off on the inves- Cheryl Phillips, The Seattle Times tigation of Your Black Muslim Bakery. (A handyman for the bakery was ordered to stand trial on a murder charge in the Bailey slaying.) TREASURER They expect the investigation to go much further. Dianna Hunt, Fort Worth Star-Telegram IRE and our Bay Area members are contributing too. One lead- ing member is Mary Fricker, who modestly says she is heeding the SECRETARY lesson of Bob Greene. She has long been one of my IRE heroes. Stephen C. Miller, The New York Times Retired last year after 20 years as an award-winning business reporter at The Santa Rosa (Calif.) Press Democrat, Fricker is working on Wendell Cochran, American University the Bailey Project four days a week while living in a room above a Renee Ferguson, WMAQ-Chicago friend’s garage. A member since 1985 and a frequent speaker, she is Manny Garcia, The Miami Herald Chauncey Bailey one of the people whose knowledge, expertise and skill inspired me Mark Katches, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel (1949 – 2007) as a young journalist. Lise Olsen, Houston Chronicle Now she’s part of the team led by Robert “Rosey” Rosenthal, the new director of the Center for Investigative Reporting and former managing editor of Lea Thompson, ThomThom Media, LLC The San Francisco Chronicle. The center, too, is part of the project, along with the Society Marilyn Thompson, The New York Times for Professional Journalists’s Northern California Chapter, the Knight Foundation, which has Duff Wilson, The New York Times donated $125,000, the National Association of Black Journalists and the Bay Area Association Alison Young, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution of Black Journalists, and many others. (See story on p. 32-33) Spurred on by calls from members, former IRE executive director Brant Houston, contacted Dori Maynard of the Maynard Institute and Sandy Close, leader of New America Media. IRE The IRE Journal (ISSN0164-7016) is published and New America Media have collaborated on IRE’s new training initiative for ethnic media six times a year by Investigative Reporters and newsrooms. That effort takes on greater significance after the murder of Bailey, a prominent Editors, Inc. 138 Neff Annex, Missouri School of voice in Oakland’s African-American media. Journalism, Columbia, MO 65211, 573-882-2042. Print, electronic and broadcast journalists in the project have pored through hundreds of E-mail: [email protected]. U.S. subscriptions are real estate records, civil and criminal files and government documents in numerous counties. $70 for individuals, $85 for libraries and $125 for institutions/businesses. International sub- IRE is providing data analysis and computer services, particularly a cyber place where the scriptions are $90 for individuals and $150 for team can compile and share information. all others. Periodical postage paid at Jeffer- IRE is proud to help. But the real work is the shoe leather and data work by committed son City, Mo. Postmaster: Please send address journalists and IRE members such as Mary Fricker. “Our goal is to send this message far and changes to IRE. USPS #451-670 wide,” Mary says. “You can’t kill a story by killing a journalist.” © 2008 Investigative Reporters and Editors, Inc. Contact James Grimaldi at [email protected]. 4 THE IRE JOURNAL IFEATURES R E N E W S Morning News takes first in Meyer Awards MEMBER NEWS The Dallas Morning News took top honors in Second place: The Atlanta Journal-Constitu- ilbert Bailon, the president of the Ameri- the 2006 Philip Meyer Journalism Awards for its tion, “A Matter of Life and Death,” a four-day G can Society of Newspaper Editors, is the “Faking the Grade” investigation. Analyzing stan- package of stories that documented how Georgia dardized test scores from around the state, reporters has failed to follow through on capital punishment new editorial-page editor at the St. Louis Post- Holly Hacker and Joshua Benton found patterns reforms promised after the U.S. Supreme Court Dispatch. He was the publisher of Al Día, a Span- in students’ answers that pointed to widespread ruled in 1972 that the state’s application of the death ish-language newspaper in Texas. Carole cheating on high-stakes exams. penalty was “arbitrary and capricious.” Reporters JAMES GRIMALDI In second place, The Atlanta Journal-Consti- Bill Rankin, Heather Vogell, Sonji Jacobs and Bass, freelance writer, won an Alicia Patterson THE WASHING T ON POS T , tution showed that Georgia has failed to correct database specialist Megan Clarke led a team that Foundation grant to research stories about IRE BOARD PRESIDENT “arbitrary and capricious” application of the death hand-built a database of more than 2,300 murder toxic chemicals poisoning American workers.