Jim Heaney

Jim Heaney is editor and executive director of Investigative Post. He was an investigative reporter with The Buffalo News from 1986 to 2011 and a reporter and editor with The Orlando Sentinel from 1980-86. His coverage over the years has focused on economic development, local and state government, politics, education, housing and transportation, and he was an early practitioner of computer-assisted reporting. Heaney has won more than 20 journalism awards and was a finalist for the 1993 Pulitzer Prize for investigative reporting.

Dec 25

2023

Monday Morning Read

Merry Christmas! If you don’t already subscribe to WeeklyPost, give yourself a gift right now! Christmas has been effectively cancelled in Bethlehem. Alden Global Capital is the worst of the worst chain owners of newspapers. Here’s what they’ve done to the paper in Joe Biden’s hometown since buying it, and here’s what they’re doing to Greyhound bus stations. Yeah, there’s a connection. Lee Enterprises – owner of The Buffalo News, or what’s left of it – reported a disappointing year. The past five years haven’t been so hot, either. The current issue of The Nation, much of it focused on[...]

Posted 1 year ago

Dec 17

2023

Monday Morning Read

A subscription to WeeklyPost is free. Need I say more? Politicians have pointed to the creation of 50,000 good paying jobs to justify the massive $6.4 billion subsidy of a planned microchip factory north of Syracuse. The Syracuse Post-Standard put those claims under the microscope and found direct employment would be a lot less. A whole lot less. The biggest chunk of new workers would be government employees – great – and many others would be waiters, bus drivers and hotel and day care workers – not necessarily full-time and certainly not good paying. Mind you, a lot of direct jobs will be created.[...]

Posted 1 year ago

Dec 14

2023

‘A Crazy System’: How arbitration returns abusive guards to New York prisons

This article was published in partnership with The Marshall Project, a nonprofit news organization covering the U.S. criminal justice system. Sign up for their newsletters, and follow them on Instagram, TikTok, Reddit and Facebook. The Marshall Project is distributing this story via Investigative Post, the (Albany) Times Union and New York Focus. A guard working at a Hudson Valley prison pummeled a 19-year-old shackled by the legs to a restraint chair. An officer at a facility near the Canadian border denied food to a man in solitary confinement 13 times over a week. Outside Albany, a guard told a prisoner, “That’s how you get dumped on your fucking[...]

Posted 1 year ago

Dec 10

2023

Monday Morning Read

The Guardian published a piece that underscored just how out of step the Bills stadium project in Orchard Park is. Most owners, says Victor Matheson, an economics professor at College of the Holy Cross in Massachusetts, “understand that having an entertainment district that generates money 365 days a year is way better than the model of a walled fortress surrounded by a moat of parking lots” that is used a handful of times a year. “NFL parking lots are about the worst possible use of real estate you can think of,” he adds. “You’d much rather have a stadium in a[...]

Posted 1 year ago

Dec 3

2023

Monday Morning Read

Monday Morning Read is fine. But you’re better off subscribing to WeeklyPost. More news, sooner. Von Miller was charged last week with assaulting the pregnant mother of their children. But the story doesn’t end there. It’s the second time Miller has been investigated for violence against a woman. Then there was the lawsuit filed against him by another woman alleging revenge porn. The charge: he shared photographs of them having sex with two celebrity friends in a “fit of jealousy, anger and rage.” The Bills signed Miller for $20 million a season to not just sack quarterbacks, but serve as a spokesman, leader and[...]

Posted 1 year ago

Nov 26

2023

Punishment not befitting the crime

In the wee hours last January, prosecutors say, Jones Woods threw a rock through a window at the U.S. Attorney’s office in downtown Buffalo. No one came. Woods left after 15 minutes, authorities say. Police found him later that day at the downtown bus station on Ellicott Street. After being arrested and charged with criminal mischief, he appeared in City Court the next day and was sent on his way. Ten minutes later, he threw another rock through a window at the U.S. Attorney’s office. “I knew if I came back here, I would go to federal prison,” he told[...]

Posted 1 year ago

Nov 26

2023

Monday Morning Read

A subscription to WeeklyPost, our email newsletter, is free. What are you waiting for? There’s been a fair amount of horse race coverage of the competition to succeed Brian Higgins in the 26th Congressional District. Charlie Specht of The Buffalo News named the three leading contenders – Tim Kennedy, Mark Poloncarz and Byron Brown. Where do they stand on the issues? What sort of agenda would they would bring to Washington? Poloncarz is the most progressive of the three and has a solid track record as county executive and before that, comptroller, although there is the matter of him and Kathy Hochul[...]

Posted 1 year ago

Nov 20

2023

License plate readers target minority neighborhoods

Buffalo police have quietly installed license plate readers at 41 intersections in the city, two-thirds of them located in neighborhoods populated predominantly with people of color. Buffalo police, in response to a Freedom of Information Law request for the department’s policies on license plate readers, wrote that they’re used for “law enforcement investigative purposes only.” While it’s unclear how the department now is using readers, police in the past used mobile readers to issue traffic tickets, at considerable profit to the city. Unlike many other cities, neither the police nor Mayor Byron Brown, their commander in chief, have made the[...]

Posted 1 year ago