The Milwaukee Journal Sentinal’s investigation into the culture, politics and laws around drinking in that state, “Wasted in Wisconsin,” has been awarded a National Highway Traffic Safety Administration “Lifesavers” public service award.
Additionally, the state Senate just passed a bill “requiring more drivers to install ignition interlock devices on their vehicles and to make some fourth [...]

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This time around The Commercial Appeal tackles violent crime on the neighborhood level. Kristina Goetz examines the Clementine neighborhood, which I identified as having the most violent crimes July 2000-May 2009, and 39 other neighborhoods which account for 10 percent of the violent crime in Memphis.
Read the story here and don’t miss the rest of [...]

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This past weekend Commercial Appeal reporter Cindy Wolff explored the trends in pet adoption and euthanasia at Memphis Animal Services.
I did the data analysis for the story and the thing that struck me instantly was the 79% euthanasia rate for dogs and cats last year. Damn. At least it’s down from the 82% in 2006.
Makes me sad though to [...]

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This would be hilarious if it wasn’t so stupid: Wired reports that Web geek Aaron Swartz runs a PERL script to scrape all of the federal court documents off of PACER’s normally pay-as-you-go system and incurs an FBI investigation as a result.
Documents generally cost 8 cents apiece, but the Government Printing Office was experimenting with allowing unfettered [...]

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Part 1 of the Commercial Appeal’s True Crime series has been published at last.
A lot of work went into the project and the result is many different components. You can head directly to the project page, or if there’s too much to wrap your head around you can use this handy road map instead.
Don’t miss [...]

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