Tag: Media

Jun 11

2023

Monday Morning Read

Published by

Subscribe here to receive our free weekly newsletter, delivered to your inbox Sunday mornings. The Buffalo News reports that city legislators want the school district and the police department to look into the use of “child identification kits” — which include DNA samples — as a tool to help locate kids who have gone missing. They might want to check out this recent report from ProPublica, which found “no evidence” such kits help find missing kids, despite claims by providers that have convinced governments to spend millions to purchase them. One critic ProPublica quoted called the kits “crime control theater.” Also via the[...]

Posted 2 years ago

Jun 4

2023

Monday Morning Read

Published by

WeeklyPost is a free email newsletter delivered Sunday mornings. You can subscribe here. The Buffalo News published a good analysis Sunday on the dynamics that doomed Medaille University and how they threaten other private colleges, as well. I graduated from Medaille in 1977, after first attending St. Bonaventure University, and it’s weird to see your alma mater go out of business. I got a good education at Medaille; three professors stick out, Kevin Ransom, Ross Runfola and Roger Bonenfant. I also had a good adjunct you might have heard of: Irv Weinstein. He got me my first serious taste of[...]

Posted 2 years ago

May 28

2023

Monday Morning Read

Published by

Below is half of what you’ll get in your inbox Sunday mornings if you subscribe to WeeklyPost. Mike Desmond might be the longest tenured reporter in Buffalo. At least he was until WBFO fired him without notice, in the process stripping him of health insurance while he was recovering from a broken back. His dismissal prompted Mark Scott, who was synonymous with the station for four decades, to lambaste the station Friday in a Facebook post. He derided station management for not only firing Desmond, which he termed “unconscionable,” but for what he said was a move a year ago to “severely[...]

Posted 2 years ago

May 21

2023

Monday Morning Read

Published by

Subscribe to WeeklyPost and you’ll receive it, free, in your inbox Sunday mornings, including a summary of Investigative Post’s reporting of the previous week. The Trace, a nonprofit news organization that reports on gun violence, marked the one-year anniversary of the Tops Massacre with a story that notes the lack of progress addressing systemic problems on the city’s East Side. Local foundations have directed some money east of Main Street. The state, too. City Hall? Not really. In fact, the response from Mayor Byron Brown and the Common Council has been tepid. Geoff Kelly is looking over the mayor’s proposed budget[...]

Posted 2 years ago

May 15

2023

Monday Morning Read

Published by

Subscribe to WeeklyPost and you’ll Jim Heaney’s recommended reading for the week. As in below. Michael Joseph and his Clover Group have been in the news of late — that’s an understatement — as they were in 2021 when they bought a mansion that shares a waterfront with Mar-a-Lago, home to you-know-who. Here are snippets published in September 2021 by The Real Deal, a real estate website, regarding Joseph’s purchase of a West Palm Beach mansion for $15.9 million. The two-story home in the Prospect Park neighborhood has six bedrooms and nine and a half bathrooms, according to Realtor.com. Completed[...]

Posted 2 years ago

May 7

2023

Monday Morning Read

Published by

Subscribe, for free, to WeeklyPost and you’ll not only get Jim Heaney’s recommended reading (below), but his summary of Investigative Post’s reporting for the previous week. For starters, here’s a thoughtful piece by Dick Tofel, a retired ProPublica executive, on what NPR and commercial television newsrooms are doing to fill some of the void being created by the demise of local daily newspapers. Tofel cites research that concluded neither are rising to the occasion. In other media news, Vice News appears headed for bankruptcy and Maureen Dowd of the New York Times laments the disappearance of traditional newspaper newsrooms. I’ve worked in two[...]

Posted 2 years ago

Apr 30

2023

Monday Morning Read

Published by

Subscribe to our WeeklyPost newsletter and you’ll get Jim Heaney’s recommended reading – and a whole lot more – in your inbox Sunday mornings. The deal to build the Titans a new stadium in Nashville (the current venue is only 24 years old) will involve a larger upfront taxpayer handout than the deal here in Buffalo. The daily paper down there has the details, The Buffalo News compares the deals and Neil deMause of Field of Schemes offers his analysis.  He also reports on a new deal in Calgary to build a $1.2 billion arena for the NHL Flames. Meanwhile, The Toronto Star reported that the Ottawa Senators, a[...]

Posted 2 years ago

Apr 23

2023

The Buffalo News was never a “crown jewel”

Published by

There’s more news to report regarding The Buffalo News – none of it encouraging. The Poynter Institute, a major news media think tank and training center, published a story last week that chronicled the decline of The News. The story is aptly headlined The Buffalo News was the crown jewel of Warren Buffett’s news empire. Now it’s just another Lee paper. Reporter Angela Fu did a good job of detailing all that’s gone wrong since Lee Enterprises bought the paper in 2020, starting with its loss of corporate independence. However, I think the story portrayed the paper in a better[...]

Posted 2 years ago
Investigative Post