Washington Independent got a nod from The New York Times this week, when Times columnist Frank Rich referred to — and drove traffic to — John Dougherty’s article from last week about John McCain’s flagging popularity in his home state.
That synergy continued with the TWI debut of James Risen, the Times’ Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter, who wrote about neoconservatives’ renewed efforts to spin the handling of the Iraq War with their revisionist memoirs.
Spencer Ackerman provided some much-needed analysis for one of Washington’s other major stories this week, the testimony on Capitol Hill about how senior Pentagon officials transformed a program for troops to resist torture into a blueprint for torturing terrorism suspects.
New fellows Jason Kosena and Naomi Zeveloff both made auspicious debuts at Colorado Independent this week.
Kosena made his mark with a three-part series on Colorado’s water wars, detailing controversial plans for new reservoirs that critics say could deal a death blow to northern Colorado’s river ecosystem, possibly causing the Poudre River to all but disappear.
Zeveloff, meanwhile, turned to the plight of Denver’s homeless during the upcoming Democratic National Convention (DNC), a story that snared the attention of The Huffington Post.
Erin Rosa also continued her aggressive coverage of the DNC with a report that Denver police have purchased 88 rifles as part of a “less lethal” weapons system to be used for convention security.
MICHIGAN MESSENGER
Fellows at the Messenger launched the week with an enlightening statewide survey of how skyrocketing gas prices are affecting the lives and livelihoods of Michiganders — from Detroiters who are willing to give up food to pay for gas, to state officials who are thinking about unpaving roads in order to cut costs.
The MM team also provided live coverage of Barack Obama’s appearances in Flint and Detroit, as well as Al Gore’s endorsement of the Democratic nominee-in-waiting.
Meanwhile, Ed Brayton wrapped up his three-part series on fundamentalist Christians in the military and soldiers who evangelize during their tours of duty.
And finally, Alexa Stanard reported on new University of Michigan research concerning the misuse of Misoprostol, a companion drug to RU-486, shedding light on the deaths of eight women who may have died from the abortion drug.
In the second week of its new incarnation, Minnesota Independent broke two important stories about one of the biggest loopholes in American politics — corporate sponsorships of the national political conventions — with an analysis of what the sponsors’ lobbying and campaign contributions say about their influence.
Editor Steve Perry also conducted a revealing interview with Jeff Sharlet, author of a new book about the Family, a network of Christian political and business leaders that holds surprising and unsuspected sway over foreign and domestic affairs.
Meanwhile, political writer Paul Demko was the first to get Jeff Blodgett, former aide to the late Sen. Paul Wellstone, on record as saying that he’ll be running Barack Obama’s Minnesota campaign.
Finally, praise keeps coming from unexpected places, as MnIndy’s Andy Birkey was awarded a 2008 Sex-Positive Journalism Award, in recognition for his June 2007 commentary on how TV news colludes with law enforcement in its coverage of sex stings.
Iowa fellows continued their coverage of the state’s extensive flooding, reporting on the damage revealed by receding waters with photos and video.
Lynda Waddington kept a vigilant eye on the Iowa meatpacking firm, Agriprocessors, whose Postville plant was the target of the largest immigration raid in American history last month. This week, Waddington broke the exclusive news that one of the plant’s supervisors, who had forced employees to buy used and often defective cars from him, has fled the country.
Douglas Burns and Jason Hancock further explored lawmakers’ plans to help citizens rebuild. As Dien Judge discovered from Sen. Charles Grassley, however, farmers won’t see any federal aid for their damaged crops until late 2009.
John Arnold garnered reader attention this week with his post-mortem of a failed plan to protect a large swath of northern New Mexico as a national wilderness. Arnold found that a botched public-relations campaign has left Sen. Jeff Bingaman scrambling to get support from landowners who were kept out of the loop when the conservation bill was put together.”
Also on the environmental beat, Gwyneth Doland went behind the controversy surrounding the reintroduction of the gray wolf to find that most New Mexicans actually want the wolves to come back.
Finally, NMI editor Trip Jennings maintained the site’s focus on the corrections industry, reporting that private-prison firm GEO Group has ceased operating the troubled Fort Bayard Medical Center, deemed one of the worst-run nursing homes in the country.
DEPARTMENT OF GOOD NEWS
It hit him in a dream: Use Mother Nature to cleanse water runoff by Todd A. Heywood
Cedar Rapidians: Battered and Soiled, But Far From Beaten by Lynda Waddington
Healthy progress by Marjorie Childress