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Disney looks to improve parks to further growth
Jerry W. Jackson, Debbie Salamone and Sean Mussenden of The Orlando Sentinel used public records to determine that Walt Disney World represents a more than $4 billion-a-year business in Central Florida. The paper reviewed state, local and county tax records, corporate annual reports and 15 years’ worth of federal SEC filings, using computer-assisted reporting, to…
Read MoreRestaurant inspections find high number of infractions
Lee Davidson of The Deseret Morning News uses computer assisted-reporting to analyze nearly 10,000 restaurant inspections during 2003 and 2004. The data were obtained through a state open records request. “The analysis shows which restaurants had the most violations per inspection and the fewest, with 25 establishments averaging 13 or more critical violations per inspection,…
Read MoreRush hour trains running late
Rob Gebeloff and Joe Malinconico of The (Newark) Star-Ledger analyzed state data to find that while New Jersey Transit’s overall on-time performance is close to 95 percent, “on-time rates for dozens of rush-hour trains are twice as bad as the overall average.” The paper’s analysis also showed that “on the Northeast Corridor, one of every…
Read MorePolice chases up in Nashville
Ian Demsky of The (Nashville) Tennessean used local police data to show that “a record number of police pursuits zipped through Nashville streets last year, even as beefed-up safety measures caused officers to cancel more of the dangerous car chases than ever before.” A third of the 269 police chases in 2004 led to some…
Read MoreRadiologist’s long hours invoke suspicion
Charles Ornstein and Tracy Weber of the Los Angeles Times used California’s Public Records Act to show that “Martin Luther King Jr./Drew Medical Center paid more than $1.3 million over the last year for the services of a radiologist who said he worked an average of 20 hours a day, seven days a week, during…
Read MoreFelony, not petty criminals fill jail
Karen E. Crummy of The Denver Post analyzed county data to find that “most of the inmates crammed into the Denver County Jail are accused of robbery, burglary, selling drugs and even violent assaults. Relatively few of them are the drunken drivers and petty drug users whom people often associate with county jail.” Local residents…
Read MoreCity insiders’ tickets dismissed at much higher rate than most
Patrick Lakamp of The Buffalo News analyzed 24,000 parking ticket hearings, finding that most Buffalo residents pay the majority of their fines, whereas as a select few city insiders get their fines dismissed. “They just write letters to the city’s parking enforcement director. Two-thirds of the time, their tickets go away.” A deputy commissioner of…
Read MoreU.S. implements secret policy to win over Islam
David E. Kaplan of U.S. News & World Reports details how the White House is implementing a secret policy to intervene not just in the Muslim world, but within Islam itself, and how Washington has set up a program of political warfare unmatched since the height of the Cold War forty years ago. The project…
Read MoreOrlando convention center fails to meet high standards
Dan Tracy of the Orlando Sentinel spent more than six months investigating the Orange County Convention Center and the industry surrounding Central Florida’s largest single public-works project. “The center’s $748 million expansion, which opened in August 2003 in the midst of a tourism and travel slump, attracted only 154,317 new visitors during its first full…
Read MoreFaulty oversight put youth at risk
Jonathan D. Rockoff and John B. O’Donnell of The (Baltimore) Sun analyzed spending by 25 companies that run group homes for foster children, finding “a broad failure by the state to protect the interests of 2,700 youths who live in 330 privately run homes in Maryland. The state licenses and funds the facilities but does…
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