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 5

2026

The state of Investigative Post

Investigative Post enjoyed a dramatic growth in our audience in 2025, our 13th year in business. Pageviews on our website topped 1 million for the first time: 1,390,934 to be precise. That total nearly equaled our traffic for the two previous years combined. While our traffic is small compared to the legacy news outlets in town, it’s more than respectable considering we typically publish only one story a day. Our competitors are akin to department stores; we’re a boutique. Our per-story audience stacks up well with the competition, as does our impact. Our growth in traffic was driven in part[...]

Posted 3 hours ago

Dec 29

2025

A revolution and civil war, all in one

The Ken Burns documentary series on the American Revolution that recently aired on PBS is an unsanitized version that they didn’t teach us in school. The fight for independence was one part revolution, one part civil war, with brutalities on both sides. That was one takeaway. Others include: George Washington was not all that hot of a military strategist, but he was a great leader of men. He was the towering figure of the revolution after the Declaration of Independence. Patriot soldiers won the war in part due to their sheer fortitude. The militias and Continental army were not to[...]

Posted 1 week ago

Dec 22

2025

The many costs of proposed data center

There’s a lot to not like about data centers. They consume a lot of energy, and oftentimes water, and usually demand a lot of public subsidies. All to fuel the operations — and profits — of the likes of Amazon, Google, Apple and Meta. J. Dale Shoemaker reported last week about a new proposal to build a massive data center at the STAMP industrial park in Genesee County, located midway between Buffalo and Rochester. How massive? There’s its physical size: 38 football fields. And its energy consumption: 500 megawatts. That’s enough electricity to power practically every residence in Erie County.[...]

Posted 2 weeks ago

Dec 19

2025

The case for public financing of nonprofit news media

The New York State Capitol in Albany. Photo via Flickr user mrsmecomber. This story was updated at 7:58 a.m. on Jan. 3 Last June, CNN broadcast a live performance of Good Night and Good Luck, the Broadway play about legendary journalist Edward R. Murrow, who called out and stared down the red-baiting Senator Joseph McCarthy. Following the broadcast, Anderson Cooper interviewed Scott Pelley, correspondent for 60 Minutes, who at one point declared: “You cannot have democracy without journalism.” There’s a lot less journalism being practiced these days and our democracy is the poorer for it. And the worst may be[...]

Posted 2 weeks ago

Dec 15

2025

Survey: A lot of Bills fans are plowed at home games

We’re closing in on Christmas, so I’ll start out a little less heavy than usual. A survey of fans attending NFL games found that Bills fans drink more than almost any fan base. Just shy of 16 percent of fans have at least five alcoholic beverages before and/or during games. Put another way: Some 11,400 fans are plastered for games. Tailgating has something to do with it. Six in Ten Bills fans drink before they enter the stadium, according to the survey. Only the Arizona Cardinals had a higher percentage of fans boozing it up (18.5 percent) than the Bills[...]

Posted 3 weeks ago

Dec 8

2025

Buffalo’s incoming mayor begins to build his team

Mayor-elect Sean Ryan’s management team is starting to take shape with the announcement Friday of four deputy mayors. Three of the four are present or past members of Mark Poloncarz’s team in Erie County government. That’s a good sign — on the surface, anyway — as the county executive has been a competent administrator, the terrible deal on the Bills stadium notwithstanding. Past mayors have had one, sometimes two, deputies. Ryan’s approach is to give each deputy mayor a portfolio of departments to oversee. The most thankless assignment will fall to Eugenio Russi, responsible for the police and fire departments.[...]

Posted 4 weeks ago

Dec 1

2025

There’s more to local media than what the chains offer

Although local corporate media websites attract most of the traffic, there are a growing number of worthwhile websites and Substacks worth reading. Allow me to introduce, or remind you, of the best of them: Ken Kruly authors Politics and Other Stuff, which reports on, well, politics and other stuff. Ken has a particularly sharp eye when it comes to government and campaign finances. He also has a good feel for local and state politics. Charlie Specht writes Buffalo Muckraker on Substack, riffing largely off his work for Channel 2 and drawing from his knowledge gained through previous reporting gigs with[...]

Posted 1 month ago

Nov 25

2025

‘Falls mayor in need of anger management

Many politicians and bureaucrats drag their feet when they field a request for information from a reporter they don’t like or are asked about something they’d rather not disclose. But they at least go through the motions of responding – eventually. Then there’s Niagara Falls Mayor Robert Restaino, who recently announced on his YouTube channel that he’s refusing to respond to information requests from the Niagara Gazette. Wrote the newspaper, in a story we republished last week: In his message, Restaino also suggested the newspaper and members of its staff have refused to “honor” an “obligation” to report on things[...]

Posted 1 month ago