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.

Jan 2

2025

Building off a strong year in 2024

Investigative Post heads into the new year with a head of steam. Traffic to many news websites has flatlined or even dropped the past several years. That’s not the case with Investigative Post. Our pageviews in 2024 jumped by 62 percent and our traffic is more than double what it was in 2021. There’s a variety of reasons for our growth. We produced more content last year than ever, some 250 pieces for our website and another 50 we co-produced with our television partners. We also worked with AlignSimple and the Google News Initiative to develop and implement strategies to[...]

Posted 2 months ago

Dec 29

2024

April Baskin’s results fall short of her rhetoric

The Buffalo News sure is fond of April Baskin, the outgoing chair of the Erie County Legislature and incoming state senator. In a profile and subsequent editorial, The News portrayed her as an effective champion of social justice. I beg to differ. The Legislature under her leadership has been a rubber stamp for County Executive Mark Poloncarz. She seems joined at the hip with Democratic Party HQ, which saw to it that she ascended to Tim Kennedy’s vacant Senate seat without serious opposition. Baskin and her colleagues somehow decided construction of the new Bills stadium didn’t require an environmental impact[...]

Posted 2 months ago

Dec 26

2024

My tenure at Investigative Post

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[...]

Posted 2 months ago

Dec 23

2024

The smart way to build a stadium

I get a chuckle out of stories that raise the prospect of major spinoff development near the new Buffalo Bills stadium. The Buffalo News published another story to that effect last week. It’s not gonna happen. Terry Pegula has insisted on an open-air stadium surrounded by parking lots, located in the outer-ring suburb of Orchard Park. His approach runs counter to best practices employed by most other NFL owners who have built stadiums over the past decade. The Conversation, which fancies itself for “academic rigor, journalistic flair,” outlined how stadiums can be done right. Key points include: “It’s smarter to[...]

Posted 2 months ago

Dec 8

2024

Our neighbors to the north are not a problem

Donald Trump has lumped Canada in with Mexico as a source of drugs and undocumented immigration and threatened to impose tariffs as a consequence. Jerry Zremski of The Buffalo News debunks the claim. Twenty-four times more drugs have been seized at the southern border than the northern one. Undocumented immigrants: 11 times greater crossing from Mexico than Canada so far this year. Buffalo police want to use artificial intelligence as a crime fighting tool. The ACLU cautions of the potential for abuse when police are given AI tools without proper guardrails. Niagara Falls is starting to smarten up when it[...]

Posted 3 months ago

Dec 1

2024

Let’s get real about why Harris lost to Trump

A fair number of press observers criticized mainstream news outlets for not reporting on Donald Trump more critically during the campaign for president. Yeah, the press could have done a better job, at least when it came to its obsession about polls. But I think the criticism was overblown. I mean, did anyone reading the newspaper or watching television news not know what Trump was about? I’ll note that polling showed that voters who relied on mainstream outlets favored Trump’s opponent by a wide margin. I will take issue with one important aspect of press coverage since the election, however.[...]

Posted 3 months ago

Nov 24

2024

No wonder so many people are misinformed

I don’t mean to be a press critic, but compelling stories keep coming to my attention that I want to share. One in five adults regularly get their news from social media influencers, according to a survey by the Pew Research Center. Among the under-30 set, it’s more than one in three. These influencers are most frequently found on Twitter and are mostly men who are more likely to lean right than left. Perhaps most telling, only a quarter of influencers have ever worked for a news organization. Opined Taylor Lorentz of UserMag: “Pew’s findings paint a concerning picture of[...]

Posted 3 months ago

Nov 17

2024

Way too many people can’t read – adults and kids

The numbers are shocking. “Illiteracy has become such a serious problem in our country that 130 million adults are now unable to read a simple story to their children,” reports the National Literacy Institute. That’s half the adult population. That same half has difficulty performing such basic tasks such as reading the labels of their prescription drugs. A little more than half of adults read below a sixth grade reading level. One in five are flat out illiterate. A majority of Americans don’t read a single book through the course of a year. Only one-in-three kids read for pleasure. Etc.[...]

Posted 3 months ago