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 19

2026

More on the Big Brother act at Wegmans

The story of Wegmans snooping on its customers has legs. The Gothamist broke the story and several local news outlets here followed with stories that largely quoted store flaks as refusing to say whether facial recognition technology is deployed in WNY as it is in New York City. Our J. Dale Shoemaker did a deeper drive that documented the use of biometrics is just the tip of the iceberg. Investigative Post has found that Wegmans is tracking and collecting data on customers from the moment they enter the parking lot to the moment they check out. Big Brother kind of[...]

Posted 7 days ago

Jan 13

2026

Change coming to Buffalo News ownership

It can’t get any worse. That’s my first-blush impression of the pending change in ownership and management of Lee Enterprises, the newspaper chain whose holdings include The Buffalo News. Lee bought The News, and 30 other daily papers owned by Berkshire Hathaway, in March 2020. Lee’s ownership of The News — and, I suspect, many other papers under its control — has been marred by top-down management and poor decision-making. Crippling debt, along with the changing economics of the newspaper industry, are at the root of Lee’s problems and help explain its management of The News. Revenues companywide have dropped[...]

Posted 2 weeks ago

Jan 12

2026

Newspaper dies of self-inflicted wounds

Striking journalists and supporters of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette in 2022. Photo courtesy of Communications Workers of America. Big city newspapers are constantly downsizing. It’s worse in Pittsburgh, where the Post-Gazette announced last week that it’s closing altogether in May. The publisher cited $350 million in losses over the past 20 years, which suggests management didn’t do a good job running the business. The Buffalo News, for example, has operated in the black the past couple of decades, although its profit margin has shrunk over the years. Sour grapes also appear to be involved with the decision to close. The union[...]

Posted 2 weeks ago

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 weeks 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 4 weeks 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 1 month ago

Dec 19

2025

The case for public financing of nonprofit news media

This story originally published Dec. 19. It has since been updated and now includes an interview conducted by BronxNet, a public access channel based in New York City, with Investigative Post Editor Jim Heaney. 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[...]

Posted 1 month 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 1 month ago