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.

Aug 21

2022

If Henry Wojtaszek was Pinocchio

Here’s the latest recommended reading – and this week, viewing – from Jim Heaney. Subscribe to his Sunday email newsletter and you’ll get the news a day earlier, along with a recap of Investigative Post’s reporting from the previous week. Updated: 12:22 p.m. Henry Wojtaszek, the embattled CEO of the embattled Western Regional Off-Track Betting Corp., took the unusual step of answering questions from a reporter last week. He appeared Wednesday on WGRZ’s 5:30 p.m. newscast. Michael Wooten asked the right questions and Wojtaszek, well, let’s just say if he was Pinocchio, his nose would have been very long by the[...]

Posted 2 years ago

Aug 14

2022

Monday Morning Read

Consider this food for thought to start your week. Available, by the way, Sunday mornings, along with a summary of what Investigative Post published the previous week, in an email newsletter. It’s free, so, hey. Subscribe here. The New York Times sizes up the race between Carl Paladino and Nick Langworthy. The Times also writes about how the attack on Salman Rushdie has shaken the Chautauqua Institution. Ken Kruly, in his Politics and Other Stuff, details all the money spent by local companies and nonprofits to lobby officials in state government. It’s a lot. Ken’s list of individual spending by organizations[...]

Posted 2 years ago

Aug 2

2022

Ruling in iPost stadium lawsuit

More details of an engineering study assessing the condition of Highmark Stadium, home of the Buffalo Bills, have been made public following a ruling in a lawsuit brought by Investigative Post. The judge, however, ruled in favor of Erie County’s insistence that portions of the study remain confidential because of security concerns. Investigative Post filed a lawsuit against Erie County in state Supreme Court on Feb. 28 seeking the study after the county provided only a heavily redacted copy of the study in which 170 of its 182 pages were blacked out. The county essentially argued that it was withholding[...]

Posted 2 years ago

Jul 31

2022

Monday Morning Read

You could have read this – and more – yesterday if you subscribed to WeeklyPost, our free weekly newsletter. You can subscribe here. The Buffalo News has a new editor. The paper is making a big deal out of the fact Sheila Rayam is the first person of color to serve as editor, and it is noteworthy, particularly given The News’ lack of diversity, especially in its management ranks. Rayam joins The News after a 15-month stint at the daily newspaper in Utica. The Utica Observer-Dispatch has a newsroom staff of only a dozen journalists, so she faces the challenge of[...]

Posted 2 years ago

Jul 24

2022

A most unreasonable demand

I’ve never heard of such a thing: elected officials being asked to sign a nondisclosure agreement to preclude them from discussing public policy. Erie County Executive Mark Poloncarz is making the demand of three county legislators who would serve on a committee to consider, at long last, a community benefits agreement tied to the construction of the new Buffalo Bills stadium. The county executive wants those negotiations, much like talks involving the stadium, to be held in secret. Public policy should not be negotiated behind closed doors. This is yet another example of Poloncarz kowtowing to the Pegulas and thumbing[...]

Posted 2 years ago

Jul 18

2022

Monday Morning Read

Below is the “What I’m Reading” section of WeeklyPost, our Sunday email newsletter. You can subscribe here. Buffalo has a new school superintendent with the appointment of Tonja Williams. I’ve got to admit I was a little stunned when I heard the news. As we reported in May, she’s never taught at the elementary or high school level. She has little experience as a principal and her tenure at Futures Academy was a failure: academic achievement at the struggling elementary school actually got worse during her time there and she was eventually removed as a result. Sources told us that[...]

Posted 2 years ago

Jul 10

2022

Bad governance, poor politics

This week, Jim Heaney recaps Investigative Post’s coverage of the Common Council’s fumbling of its redistricting process and gives a shout-out to a half-dozen stories that have caught his eye. You can get Heaney’s insights in your inbox every Sunday morning by subscribing to WeeklyPost. Jimmy Griffin used to call city lawmakers the “Comical Council.” If only the current incarnation was the least bit funny. Geoff Kelly has been following the process of redistricting the Council’s nine districts, as required every decade based on new Census numbers. He first reported on the Council’s proposed district lines, gerrymandered to protect incumbents, then[...]

Posted 2 years ago

Jul 7

2022

WNY’s segregation is no accident

In May, Investigative Post documented just how segregated Buffalo and Western New York is. We’ve now produced a story for WGRZ that dives yet deeper into the numbers and the causes and consequences of that segregation.

Posted 2 years ago