Oct 27
2017
This week’s podcast features the keynote address given by Sarah Cohen at Investigative Post’s annual benefit dinner Oct. 19. Cohen, who was part of a team at The Washington Post that won a Pulitzer Prize, and later an editor at The New York Times, focused her remarks on local news and investigative reporting. “The chaos at the national level … is starting to trickle down to state and local governments,” she said.
Oct 19
2017
Pulitzer Prize winner Sarah Cohen, late of The New York Times, talks with WBFO about investigative reporting. Cohen, now a Knight chair in data journalism at Arizona State University, is keynote speaker at tonight’s benefit dinner hosted by Investigative Post.
Oct 18
2017
Twenty property owners in Niagara Falls, Lewiston and Grand Island have filed a lawsuit charging that three companies acted with gross recklessness by directly or indirectly disposing of radioactive wastes that they knew posed a danger to human health and the environment. The lawsuit was filed Monday in U.S. District Court for the Western District of New York on behalf of 28 plaintiffs who own or share homes, businesses and vacant land in the affected communities. Investigative Post reported in July 2016 that government documents show the federal Department of Energy and state health and environmental officials have known for[...]
Oct 11
2017
Jim Heaney tells Susan Arbetter of The Capitol Pressroom that out-of-town entrepreneurs who take state money and then leave after just a year remind him of a Steve Miller song … “Take the Money and Run.”
Oct 11
2017
For our latest Postcast, Dan Telvock interviewed Bill McKibben, an author and founder of 350.org, a grassroots climate change movement and news website. McKibben discusses a wide range of topics, including how climate change impacts the Great Lakes region and how the movement has evolved over the past decade.
Oct 9
2017
U.S. Senator Chuck Schumer called on the federal Environmental Protection Agency to finish the $11 million clean up of radioactive hotspots in Niagara County. Investigative Post reported in August that the EPA abruptly left the county without finishing the work. That story caught the attention of Schumer, who was in Lewiston on Monday to urge the EPA to return to clean up the “invisible stain of radioactive waste.” “This is EPA’s job, they shouldn’t be backing away from it, they shouldn’t leave homeowners like Mr. Wade in the lurch,” Schumer said. Left in limbo are property owners in Niagara Falls[...]
Oct 6
2017
For our latest Postcast, Daniela Porat interviewed De’Jon Hall, a co-author of a two-year study by UB and Cornell Law Schools alleging that the Buffalo police department engages in unconstitutional and discriminatory policing. With Porat’s recent investigation into illegal searches by a group of officers in the department’s Strike Force and Housing Units and public demands for more transparency on police checkpoints, the professionalism of city police and their treatment of people of color is the hot-button issue of the day. “When you stop me from driving to get to work downtown for no other reason than just to stop[...]
Oct 5
2017
The Niagara Falls Water Board is once again in the crosshairs of the state Department of Environmental Conversation for sewer overflows – a problem that plagues communities across the state. The Water Board reported three separate sewer overflows to the DEC on Wednesday. A total of 23.8 million gallons of untreated sewage mixed with dirty stormwater gushed into the Lower Niagara Gorge following a rainstorm. “These continued violations are wholly unacceptable,” the DEC said in a press release. Water Board officials said the rain overtaxed its sewer system, spewing raw sewage and stormwater into the river. Problem is, this happens[...]