Lynn Walsh

A story written for the Radio Television Digital News Association:

A Retrospective Look at the Royal Wedding News Coverage
May 09 2011
By Lynn Walsh, RTDNA Blogger

Two big stories over the last week or so have have proven to be very popular on the web and have kept news coverage extended beyond normal air times. I am referring, of course, to the Royal Wedding and the death of Osama bin Laden.

What’s interesting to me is that the two are completely different genres of news: one can be considered a “fluffy” entertainment piece and the other a hard-news, stop-the-presses story.

Even though the two seem drastically different, they both have at least three things in common:

1. Both stories are eliciting strong reactions from most viewers
2. Both stories have created huge frenzies online, especially on social media sites
3. Both stories led newscasts on and after the days the news occurred

The two stories have got me thinking about the resources news organizations put behind stories, especially those that are more entertainment-based.

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A story written for the Radio Television Digital News Association:

5 Things to Check Before Pressing ‘Send’
May 16 2011
By Lynn Walsh, RTDNA Blogger

If there is one thing all journalists have in common it’s that we are all busy! There are always too many phone calls to make, too many e-mails to send and too many stories to cover.

And if you are anything like me, that means you are probably constantly thinking of multiple things at once. When you are writing an e-mail or making a phone call you are probably also thinking about the next phone call or the next e-mail that needs to be sent.

I am not sure there will ever be a day when a journalist is not busy, but in the rush of things there are a few things that can help you. These are simple tasks and ones that you probably do everyday. But, in the rush of the moment, these are also things that can sometimes be skipped; it has happened to me many times.

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A story written for the Radio Television Digital News Association:

Make Reporting Life a Little Less Hectic: Manage Phone Calls
Jun 21 2011
By Lynn Walsh, RTDNA Blogger

Like most people, I am always wishing for a few more minutes or an extra hour in each work day. In my experience it seems reporters may ask for that more often than people in other professions. And, like most reporters, it seems there are always countless thoughts, story ideas or questions to be asking (normally, too many to keep straight!)

While I am not sure anyone can ever have all of it “under control” there are some ways to make small tasks like phone calls more manageable. This is the first of a series of tips I use to help keep my life a little more orderly and less overwhelming. First up, phone calls. You make them every day, some are story specific and need immediate answers while others might be routine beat calls to chat with sources and get story ideas.

Breaking news/deadline situations: These are times you are hanging up the phone as soon as you are picking it making it hard to remember who you called and what happened after the phone began to ring.

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A story written for the Radio Television Digital News Association:

Make Reporting Life a Little Less Hectic: Manage FOIA Requests
Jun 28 2011
By Lynn Walsh, RTDNA Blogger

Freedom of Information Act requests and the state equivalent requests may not be everyone’s favorite, but they can be worth it. Unfortunately the requests are not always that easy to keep up with and can sometimes get lost in the shuffle.

Here are some ways to make requesting documents more manageable that I use on an almost daily basis. This is the second of a series of tips I use to help keep my life a little more orderly and less overwhelming. Last week it was phone calls, this week it is FOIA and public information requests.

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A story written for the Radio Television Digital News Association:

Make Reporting Life Less Hectic: How to Manage Story Ideas & Keep Your Quotes
By Lynn Walsh, RTDNA Blogger

While I am not sure anyone can ever have all of it “under control” there are some ways to make small tasks like phone calls more manageable. This is the third of a series of tips I use to help keep my life a little more orderly and less overwhelming. First was phone calls, second was FOIA requests, and the last is story ideas and background information.

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An investigation for Texas Watchdog:

Wife of Houston ISD trustees president Paula Harris’ campaign manager does $75K in no-bid consulting for HISD
Tuesday, Jun 28, 2011, 08:55AM CST
By Lynn Walsh and Jennifer Peebles

The Houston school system has paid the wife of the school board president’s campaign treasurer $75,000 in no-bid work over the last two years as a consultant, arranging classes and after-school programs on subjects including CPR, English as a second language, jazz dance and parenting.

Demetra C. Jones, the wife of prominent Houston lawyer Franklin D.R. “Frank” Jones Jr., and her businesses have been paid $78,110 by the Houston Independent School District since 2009, records released by the school system show.

Frank Jones is the campaign treasurer for Paula Harris, who was elected to the HISD trustees in 2007 and who became the trustees’ president in January. Frank Jones has also done legal work for the Houston schools, including serving as lead negotiator for the school district when it hired current Superintendent Terry Grier away from the San Diego, Calif., schools two years ago.

Demetra Jones is the former longtime head of human resources and risk management for Harris County Precinct One, working under County Commissioner El Franco Lee for two decades. She previously served as office manager in City Hall for state Sen. Rodney Ellis when he was a Houston city councilman some 20 years ago, and was public affairs manager for Ellis’ Houston investment bank, Apex Securities, according to two resumes available online.

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An investigation for Texas Watchdog:

Houston ISD tech vendors spent ‘significant funds’ to entertain trustees Larry Marshall, Manuel Rodriguez, court filing alleges
Thursday, Jun 23, 2011, 09:08AM CST
By Lynn Walsh and Jennifer Peebles

Vendors selling computer equipment to the Houston public schools spent “significant funds” to entertain school trustees Larry Marshall and Manuel Rodriguez, attorneys representing whistleblowers and the federal government allege in court documents, calling the payments “unlawful” and “designed to secure business from” the Houston schools.

Meanwhile, the court documents also allege that one of the Houston Independent School District’s top officials in the early part of the last decade, Cathy Mincberg, had an extramarital affair with a consultant whom the school district paid more than $5 million — a consultant she was reported by the local press to have had a hand in hiring.

The federal government has taken over as lead plantiff in the lawsuit, and court filings do not elaborate in court filings on what, specifically, the “significant funds” included or how much money was involved. Calls for comment to the plantiff’s lawyers were not returned.

The revelations come on the heels of reports that a Houston schools vendor, insurance agent and state Rep. Borris Miles, offered to arrange all-expenses-paid trips to Costa Rica to most of the school system’s trustees last year — and that Marshall went on two of the trips. It also follows reporting by Texas Watchdog that school trustees president Paula Harris voted on $28 million in contracts that included work for a company owned and run by one of her closest friends.

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An investigation for Texas Watchdog:

HISD vendor state Rep. Borris Miles offered trustees all-expenses-paid Costa Rican trip, email shows
Thursday, Jun 16, 2011, 06:27PM CST
By Lynn Walsh, Trent Seibert and Jennifer Peebles

A state representative who services the Houston Independent School District’s flood insurance policy — and who is a close friend of two HISD trustees — offered to arrange an all-expenses-paid trip to Costa Rica to a majority of HISD’s trustees, according to an e-mail obtained by Texas Watchdog.

State Rep. Borris Miles, a Houston Democrat, offered in November to take most of the trustees to Costa Rica, saying he was arranging the free trip at the behest of the government of that Central American nation, the email shows.

It also shows Miles also offered to allow each trustee to bring along a guest, and wrote that the Costa Rican government would waive deductibles on “medical tourism” procedures, effectively offering the trustees and their guests deep discounts on the services.

It was not immediately clear whether any of the HISD trustees took Miles up on the offer. Three trustees reached by phone Thursday afternoon said they didn’t remember getting the e-mail. A fourth said he deleted it.

“I remember receiving it and thinking it was strange and deleting it,” said trustee Harvin Moore.

The revelation of the trip offer comes on the heels of Texas Watchdog’s recent story revealing that HISD trustees president Paula Harris, a close friend of Miles, voted on contracts that included work for a company run by another close friend, Pearland businesswoman Nicole West.

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An investigation for Texas Watchdog:

Houston ISD trustees president Paula Harris voted on millions of dollars in contracts involving close friend’s firms
Thursday, Jun 09, 2011, 06:07AM CST
By Lynn Walsh

When the Houston Independent School District has a problem, it increasingly looks to Nicole West to solve it.

Need schools painted or fences installed? HISD hired Nicole West’s firm Westco. Need security cameras and burglar alarms installed at schools? It hired Westco. Need drapes dry cleaned for a school auditorium? It paid Westco to do it.

Need elementary school students tutored in reading? HISD paid Nicole West to tutor them. Need a high school decorated for a rededication ceremony? It paid Nicole West. Need an ambulance on standby for a high school football game? It hired another of West’s firms, a small, private ambulance service.

And when the nation’s seventh-largest school district wanted to hire a private investigations firm to track down truant high-schoolers, it didn’t pick any of the big PI firms in Houston, some of whom have dozens of investigators and have been in business for decades. It instead hired a small firm, only a few years old, owned and run by Nicole West. With two licensed investigators today, the firm’s current legal address with the state is West’s residence in Pearland.

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A story written for Texas Watchdog:

Texas school systems hang on to big-bucks reserve funds while laying off teachers
Tuesday, May 10, 2011, 08:06AM CST
By Lynn Walsh and Steve Miller

Texas’ largest school systems are laying off teachers by the hundreds and thousands while hanging on to the tens of millions of dollars in their “rainy day” and reserve funds — and some in those communities, including some teachers, say that’s a bad idea.

The Houston public schools, the state’s largest school system, has laid off more than 700 teachers to solve its budget crunch while having $279 million in reserves. The Dallas schools are considering laying off more than 1,110 employees and expect to have $85 million to $95 million in reserves at the end of the fiscal year. And the San Antonio public schools have more than $63 million in reserves, though they have found other jobs for teachers who faced threats of layoffs.

None of the three systems currently plans to dip into those bank accounts to save teachers’ jobs, though their budget proposals for the next fiscal year are in varying states of flux.

“I think they should be using the rainy day fund,” said teacher Susan Wingfield, who will be laid off at the end of this school year after 11 years in the Houston schools, the last seven teaching art at Lamar High. “We need to educate these students … We need to spend money on teachers’ salaries to do that instead of laying them off.”

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