My tenure at Investigative Post

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After more than a year helping out at Investigative Post, I’m headed back into retirement. I’m certainly happy about that. After more than 40 years in the news business, I truly enjoy my time out of it.

But I have to say, working as an editor at Investigative Post this past year-and-a-half has been inspiring. If I was closer to 50 years old than 70 (when did that happen?), I can’t think of a place I’d rather work.

I’ve been in a handful of newsrooms over my career. This one defines journalism – expose injustice, hold the powerful accountable, give voice to those not being heard, and strive to tell stories in a compelling way.

It was back in the summer of 2023 when I got a call from Jim Heaney, Investigative Post editor and executive director. He’s a longtime friend and colleague from our many years together at The Buffalo News, including my tenure as head of the paper’s investigative reporting team that he was a member of. I retired from The News in 2020.

Heaney asked if I would help with some editing at Investigative Post to free him up to focus more on the business side of things for a while. I said I would, not because I was looking to get back to work, but because I have such admiration for what Heaney has built at Investigative Post. If I could help, I felt I should.

It wasn’t long before I learned that Heaney’s news operation is more impressive than I had realized. It’s a multimedia organization at the forefront of local, nonprofit, multimedia  journalism.

Not to overplay the “multi” prefix, but it’s a multi-talented staff that reports and writes news stories, produces podcasts, television scripts and videos, and handles its own social media. While I was here to help reporters with their stories, there was plenty I could learn from them, as well.

 What’s more, beyond knowledge of their craft, the reporters here all have something that can’t be taught. It’s the belief that journalism is a vehicle to do great things, to shed light where it’s needed, to bring about change, to make a difference.

Their work shows it. In just the past year, Investigative Post broke stories on Mayor Byron Brown’s interest in heading up the Western Regional Off-Track-Betting Corp.,  Braymiller Market’s financial troubles, and Erie County jail deaths being much higher than previously reported.

Other stories focused on low mortgage lending rates to Black borrowers, and a bed bug infestation at a public housing complex. The infestation was addressed – finally – after the story was published.

And there are more. Many more.

Important stories that get action.

Heaney likes to say Investigative Post punches above its weight class. I say it sets the local news agenda in the Buffalo region.

I could say more, but retirement beckons.

Jim Heaney