Vote for your favorite story of 2025

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Our best story of 2025? You tell us.

Our ballot listing 10 stories is posted below. They’ve been selected from about 230 stories our staff produced this year, in addition to 50 or so appearances we’ve made on Michael Wooten’s 5:30 Voices newscast on WKBW 7 News.

Dale Shoemaker has three stories up for consideration, including his piece on U.S. customs officials holding families with children in makeshift cells for up to two weeks at local border crossings. Other stories of Dale’s on the ballot involve allegations of wage theft at restaurants in Niagara Falls and curiously timed campaign contributions from a paving contractor to Acting Mayor Chris Scanlon.

Geoff Kelly reported on the hit-and-run accidents and subsequent cover-up involving D.J. Granville, the narcotics chief for the Erie County Sheriff. Other stories by Geoff on the ballot include Doug Jemal’s failure to pay millions of dollars in bills to contractors, a political profile of Acting Mayor Chris Scanlon, and an analysis of yet another bad budget approved by City of Buffalo officials.

Other stories under consideration include:

• Adam Smith-Perez’s investigation into the failure of City Hall to spend money earmarked to deal with opioid overdoses.
• I’Jaz Ja’ciel’s story on the continuing failure of the city’s Housing Court judges to impose fines on negligent property owners and the City of Buffalo’s failure to collect penalties.
• Jim Heaney’s column on the radical turn to the far right by local Republicans.

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Please note you can only vote once.

Voting remains open through Wednesday, Dec. 31.

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