Debora Halpern Wenger, of the University of Mississippi, has released her case study of The Commercial Appeal’s True Crime project that I worked on. If you’re interested to read more about why we did the project, what went into pursuing it and what we learned head on over to thecrimereport.org. You can find the case [...]

Posted in Memphis, True Crime, data No Comments »

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 [...]

Posted in awards, data No Comments »

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 [...]

Posted in Memphis, True Crime, data, public records No Comments »

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 [...]

Posted in Memphis, data No Comments »

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 [...]

Posted in data, public records No Comments »