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.

Mar 2

2026

The story behind the stories of Burmese refugee

Investigative Post broke one of the biggest stories of our 14-year history last week about Nurul Amin Shah Alam, the nearly blind Burmese refugee who died in the streets of downtown Buffalo six days after Border Patrol agents dropped him off at a doughnut shop and left to find his way home, five miles away. We published five stories last week. I want to give you a look under the hood at how we went about our work. Consider this column the story behind the stories. Last Monday, Feb. 23, J. Dale Shoemaker received an email from an immigration attorney informing[...]

Posted 7 days ago

Feb 23

2026

Ryan succeeds where Brown and Scanlon failed

Byron Brown created a fiscal mess and failed to get the state government to bail the city out. Chris Scanlon, as acting mayor, was unsuccessful in getting needed help. But Sean Ryan, in his second month on the job, parlayed his Albany knowledge and connections into a commitment from Gov. Kathy Hochul for a $40 million bailout. Good for him – and us. The funds, which still require the approval of the state Legislature, don’t solve the city’s financial problems. But they give the mayor and Common Council some breathing room while they figure things out. To me, improving educational outcomes[...]

Posted 2 weeks ago

Feb 10

2026

Data center deal wrong on so many levels

There’s growing pushback across the country against data centers. They’re energy hogs that are bad for the environment and the pocketbook of electricity consumers. Except in Genesee County. There, the IDA is dangling $801 million in tax breaks in a package that works out to $6.4 million per job in an effort to bring a data center to its STAMP business park. To put this in context, the state spent $959 million to build a factory in South Buffalo for Elon Musk in exchange for 1,480 jobs. The data center deal: $801 million in tax breaks — plus likely discounted[...]

Posted 4 weeks ago

Feb 9

2026

The bloodbath at The Washington Post

Billionaires saving the newspaper industry? Not. The latest case in point: The Washington Post firing some 300 journalists last week in a cost-cutting move. Every aspect of the paper’s coverage will be impacted. The sports section will be eliminated altogether, as will the paper’s entire staff of photographers. There will be fewer hands on deck to report on all the craziness that’s playing out in the nation’s capital. Etc. The Post is owned by Jeff Bezos, who has been cozying up to Trump in ways that include gifting Melania Trump $40 million for the rights to produce a fawning documentary[...]

Posted 4 weeks ago

Feb 5

2026

A stamp of approval for Investigative Post

NewsGuard reviews and rates news websites for their credibility and transparency. It’s akin to a Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval for journalism, informing news consumers of the trustworthiness of media outlets. NewsGuard has just completed its review of Investigative Post and gave us its highest score possible – 100 out of 100. Only about 10 percent of the more than 12,000 online news and information websites it has reviewed have been so scored. According to the NewsGuard review: “Articles by Investigative Post are typically fact-based, often referencing the site’s interviews with political leaders, primary sources like government data, and credible[...]

Posted 1 month ago

Feb 2

2026

The not so hot Trump economy

Donald Trump won election for a second term in part because a lot of voters thought he would be good for the economy. He’s been in office for a year. How is the economy doing? The New York Times used data to look at eight sectors. Among the findings: Grocery prices, on balance, have increased. Trump said they’d drop if he was elected. Gas prices have dropped, but not as steeply as Trump promised on the campaign trail. The cost of electricity has increased. Trump said he’d cut prices in half during his first year in office. Manufacturing jobs have[...]

Posted 1 month ago

Jan 27

2026

Ciminelli plea concludes Buffalo Billion case

Tesla plant while under construction, managed by LP Ciminelli. The long-running saga involving allegations of bid-rigging in the construction of the Tesla plant in South Buffalo has finally run its course. In the past month, Louis Ciminelli and Alain Kaloyeros have entered guilty pleas and agreed to pay fines to settle the government’s cases against them. They avoid any additional jail time. Their previous convictions had been overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court. Their prosecutions followed reporting by Investigative Post more than a decade ago, which prompted Preet Bharara, then the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York,[...]

Posted 1 month ago

Jan 26

2026

Dispatches from Minneapolis

Editor’s note: This weekly newsletter, formerly called Monday Morning Read, has been renamed Off the News. Lydia Polgreen, a columnist for The New York Times, penned a piece published Saturday that carried the headline: In Minneapolis, I Glimpsed a Civil War. Thousands of masked, heavily armed agents, some with minimal training, have been unleashed on the streets of an American state. They have been promised near-total legal immunity by the president, effectively unshackled from any constitutional constraints. They have been given limitless license to abduct anyone, not just the undocumented immigrants but American citizens who happen to look foreign, whatever[...]

Posted 1 month ago