BRIEFLY

Edited by Donald Sevener

PRIZE WINNERS

Reporters with ideas, editors with vision

The following is the keynote address delivered by Deborah Nelson, investigative reporter for the Seattle Times at the 21st annual Peter Lisagor and Ethics Awards Banquet, held May 16 in Chicago. Nelson, a former Chicago Sun-Times reporter, won a Pulitzer Prize this year for her reports documenting abuse of low-income housing programs on Native American reservations across the nation. Nelson's husband, Tom Brune, was among those honored as finalists for Lisagor awards for his October 1996 article, "Patronage Lite," in Illinois Issues magazine. Also attending the awards banquet was Daisy Juarez, a free-lance graphics artist for Illinois Issues, who was a Lisagor finalist for her artwork in the magazine's May 1996 issue.

It's great to be back in Chicago, where I learned and practiced investigative journalism my whole career until two years ago. I got my start at the Daily Herald, a paper that included investigative reporting in its definition of community journalism.

At the Chicago Sun-Times, I apprenticed under legendary editor Bernie Judge and got to work with one of the city's greatest investigative reporters, Chuck Neubauer. His stories on [former U.S. Rep. Dan] Rostenkowski are responsible for my other 10 minutes of national fame — getting shoved by Rosty in front of a camera when I was six months pregnant.

So ... if I had all those wonderful opportunities here, why the heck did we leave town for a place like Seattle, a place supposedly so squeaky clean that there's actually a law against politicians lying during their election campaigns? I wanted the time to really sink my teeth into an issue. I wanted the space to write the hell out of a story. I wanted a travel budget that consisted of something more than a roll of CTA tokens. ... I wanted a place where I wouldn't have to argue to do big projects — where I was told to do them. So ... I did what generations of people have done when they wanted more space — I headed West.

And barn! Lightning struck. I won the Pulitzer. [Banquet organizer] Ellen Shubart wanted me to talk about what went into a Pulitzer project — and why I had to leave Chicago to get one. I'm still puzzled over that one. I feel a little like all those Cubs ballplayers I watched become stars — right after they were traded.

For a while I worried that I wouldn't be able to find anything to investigate in Seattle. Seattle is the land of good government, where it was considered a serious breach in ethics for the insurance commissioner to put her name on the consumer pamphlets her office distributed. It was noted by way of explanation that she had come from Chicago.

But then one day I received a call from an anonymous tipster about a 5,000-square-foot house on a reservation nearby built with HUD low-income housing money for the executive director of the tribal housing authority. I mentioned it to my editor, Dave [Boardman], but we'd just finished a housing investigation, and he suggested passing it along to a daily reporter. But for some reason, I just couldn't let go of it. It beckoned to me from its place in a stack of other tips until finally I couldn't stand it anymore. So I hopped in my car for the 45- minute ride to the reservation just to see if the house was there.

The tip took me past clusters of plywood shanties, past listing trailers and streets lined with cracker box HUD homes. This is where most tribal members lived. But the tip kept me going to the sparsely populated northern edge of the reservation, where I found a secluded subdivision of big houses. And there in the middle of them was one with a padlocked gate. And beyond that gate, out of sight from the road, was probably the biggest house ever built in the history of HUD's Native American housing program.

I told Dave I wanted to do a little more checking before writing about it. Despite his continued reluctance to dive into another housing investigation, he's an editor who respects his reporters' instincts. He could see that I smelled a good story, and he let me go for it. So, I put in an FOIA [Freedom of Information Act request] to see how this house came about. Was it a single incident of bad judgment or indicative of a bigger problem?

Now besides the usual lineup of documents, I FOIAed the e-mail between D.C. officials and the local HUD staff — which proved to be a real gold mine. They showed they were having a hard time finding any regulations in this recently deregulated lowincome housing program that specifically barred construction of a 5,000-square-foot house for a couple with a $92,000 income. There was a series of exchanges over whether Jacuzzis were excessive under the rules. It didn't take a genius to realize something more than a big house seemed amiss here.

After three months we'd documented pervasive problems in our region and some serious flaws in the way the program was administered. So I went to Dave and asked, "Should we start writing?" Then Dave said something that

8 / July/August 1997 Illinois Issues

One company goal is to serve the community with good journalism. This is the ownership challenging its managers to produce quality journalism.

only happens in reporters' wildest fantasies. He said: "Take more time. Let's see if this is a national story. Travel."

After I picked myself up off the floor, it was then I realized I had indeed made the right decision by moving to Seattle.

So we saw firsthand the destitute landscapes of shacks, rusting trailers and porta-potties that were reality for many needy Native American families across the country. Then we saw $400.000 homes, subsidized by HUD, for families with incomes as high as S200.000 on a casino-rich reservation in Connecticut. We found a sprawling house known locally as "the mansion" that a tribal housing official gave herself in depressed, rural Maine. There was a S45.000 remodeling job on the home of the tribal housing chairman for a destitute New Mexico tribe. A Minnesota housing authority squandered most of a S4 million housing grant — only to be immediately rewarded by HUD with another. "They must have been sitting on their brains" is how one tribal member explained HUD's actions. That kind of summed up our conclusion.

Our massive effort to document abuses paid off. The story got immediate reaction. HUD Secretary Henry Cisneros asked for an independent investigation into our stories. At a Senate hearing earlier this year, the Inspector General's office and GAO [General Accounting Office] both confirmed our findings. Changes are afoot. And of course there was the Pulitzer.

So why did my first series out of Chicago win a Pulitzer instead of the numerous ones we did here?

I'd like to be totally egocentric and say that all I needed was some space and time to really tell a story the way it should be told. And I finally got it. But it is, of course, much more than that. After all, the Seattle Times won two this year. The other one was for a terrific series on flaws in the design of the 737 that may have led to three fatal crashes.

These projects involved a collective effort influenced by the attitudes of everyone from the graphic artist to the publisher about their jobs.

The Times has these company goals posted everywhere in the building. One is to serve the community with good journalism and two is to be the best regional paper in America. I thought it was kind of corny and boosterish. Until it struck me recently: This is the ownership of the paper saying this — challenging its managers to produce quality journalism. What a different message that is than at a lot of places, where the first question is whether circulation is up and costs are down so the quarterly dividends will be up. Or whether putting a TV talk show host on a news show will boost ratings — regardless of what it'll do to the integrity of the program. The paper is into these reader focus groups and consultants like every paper and TV station seem to be — and more than I'd like. But we have editors who still listen to the voices of the paper's own news staff. And I really think that all the money in the world spent on consultants and focus groups can't replace the gut instincts of a good reporter and good editor. We've spent so much time lately trying to get in touch with our readers and viewers that we've lost touch with ourselves as news- people.

No focus group would have said they wanted to read more stories about housing for poor Native Americans — and no consultant would've recommended an investigation of the 737 in a city where Boeing is the biggest employer. Yet these turned out to be stories with high readership and positive impact, both locally and nationally

I'm not privy to what went into the judges' choices for the Pulitzers this year. But I know what went into producing two of the projects that won them.

It took a newsroom environment where reporters with ideas have the ear of editors with vision, a place with enough confidence to pull out the stops for a good story and say, "Let's go for it."

Nuf said

The General Assembly recently postponed action on a comprehensive — and complex — deregulation of electric utilities in Illinois. Here is how Bill Bush of the. State Journal Register in Springfield explained the issue recently:

There has been a lot of talk — but little public understanding — about how an electric deregulation bill recently proposed at the last ,, minute by Commonwealth Edison and other special interests would work.

While we're no accountants, here's the best analogy we can come up with to explain this complicated law:

There are two state-regulated car services: 'A" and "B." Car Service A has 10 captive elderly customers that it drives to the store twice a week. It bought a Yugo and charges $1 a ride.

Car Service B also has 10 elderly customers. It buys a 40-foot recreational vehicle powered by an experimental nuclear reactor and a backup outboard motor. It charges its customers $25 a ride.

Suddenly stirred by its deep free- market roots, the state decides these two services should compete and let the market set the price for car services.

Here's the plan suggested by B: If you leave Car Service B for the cheaper Car Service A, you pay a $23.70 per-ride fee to B over the next 10 years, theoretically to help pay off the stupid mistakes it made in purchasing its equipment (all done under the watchful eye of Illinois regulators). On top of that, B gets to issue bonds — getting upfront cash worth half the cost of their high-priced vehicle. These bonds are backed by its 10 captive customers, so even if B goes out of business, they still keep paying off B's debt on its recreational vehicle.

B,meanwhile, takes the up-front money and invests in a chain of Deja Vu nightclubs in Hong Kong.

Illinois Issues July/August 1997 /9

BRIEFLY

SO MANY ISSUES, SO LITTLE TIME
But, then, they get paid to fax it all out

The political fax season arrived unusually early this year.

Just before each election, our office is awash in press releases. Statements from politicians on everything from abortion to welfare to handguns to schools start piling up in the recycling box. They used to come by mail. These days they arrive by fax.

This technological advance lent efficiency and, for a time, an air of urgency to matters of moment. It shortened the time between deliberation and pronouncement. In some cases it shortened deliberation.

Public officials, and would-be public officials, can let us know in an instant about their latest project or their latest vote. But, as Election Day draws near, some can't resist letting us in on their latest thoughts, too. Any thoughts, it would seem. If something crosses their minds, it crosses the fax machine. The theory behind the deluge, of course, is that a politician's name might eventually land in the media and stick in voters' minds. Most politicians believe that. Because sometimes it works.

This year's fax-early-and-often-just- in-case award has to go to U.S. Sen. Carol Moseley-Braun. Hands down. The next general election is more than a year away, but already she's spitting out;statements at an admirable rate. She has better reason than most, certainly, having weathered a storm of controversy over her finances and friends. If she makes it through her own Democratic Party primary, she'll face stiff opposition from Republicans, who are making her one of their top national targets.

Based on the sheer number of issues she's taken an interest in, though, she has buckled down. On average, her office manages to crank out a couple of faxes a day. Three, if you count the occasional correction. The range of issues has been impressive, as well. Moseley-Braun reacted to the federal budget agreement and addressed the problem of crumbling schools and gaps in education spending. She alerted us that dollars are heading to Illinois for community policing and rural electric co-ops. She told us she looks forward to Senate hearings on Jewish assets deposited in foreign banks during the Holocaust and welcomes the New York Stock Exchange's decision to observe the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday. All important issues to many constituents. But the flurry of faxes reminds us of the advice once given to an overeager press aide by a former Statehouse reporter: "It's hard to see an interesting snowflake when you're standing in a blizzard."

Moseley-Braun did catch our attention last month, though, when she sent an envelope by regular mail. Unfortunately, it was empty.

Presumably, whatever she wanted to tell us got faxed.

Peggy Boyer Long

WEB SITE OF THE MONTH

Surf the Web, help a kid

Many parents and others are rightly concerned that children may be vulnerable to potential harmful effects — from pornography to commercialism — while surfing the World Wide Web. But there is one web site that has great potential to help kids: Voices for Illinois Children.

Based in Chicago, Voices is a statewide advocacy organization that reports on the well-being of children and lobbies for improvements in schooling, child welfare, health care and other issues that affect the condition of childhood in Illinois.

Its new web site —http://www.voices4kids.org — now offers you a chance to help kids in Illinois.

The site lists hundreds of volunteer opportunities, from tutoring youngsters to being a zoo guide to answering a hotline for runaways to visiting schools to talk with youngsters about guns, violence and staying in school. The comprehensive listing of organizations and issues concerning children — child abuse and neglect, child support, substance abuse, counseling, shelter, recreation and the arts, schools, health care, to name a few — includes organizations and volunteer opportunities statewide, with addresses, phone numbers (including toll-free numbers) and a description of the issues the group handles.

There is information available as well: county-by-county statistical portraits of child well-being data collected by Voices, summaries of the organization's Kids Count analysis, research studies undertaken by the organization and a bulletin board of activities, conferences and events related to child welfare.

And there is advocacy. The Voices site lists the organization's legislative agenda, links to members of Congress and the General Assembly and a step-by-step guide for contacting and meeting with a legislator.

Donald Sevener

10 / July/August 1997 Illinois Issues

DON'T HOLD YOUR NOSE
Maybe those large hog farms could get a clue from the zoo

It was as if Mother Nature gave her blessing to the Brookfield Zoo's latest project. Four days before unveiling its new odorless composting system, the zoo was hit by a "gustnado," which sounds like a legislative affliction but is actually an unscientific term to explain tornado- like winds that do tornado-like damage but are not officially classified a tornado. Whatever their name, the winds tore through the zoo's trees, resulting in mounds of wood chips. And wood chips mixed with compost, zoo officials found, make a great natural air filter to keep an unfinished compost pile from smelling bad.

"The system is so simple, yet elegant," says Gail Gorski, operations manager for the zoo. "We tried briefly during the early years of our composting program to add manure, but stopped after learning the odor disturbed our neighbors."

Gail Gorski, grounds manager for Brookfield Zoo, answers questions about the zoo's new odorless composting facility for sixth-graders from St. Michael School in Wheaton.

The first odorless composting operation in the state, the center is a demonstration site for other businesses and attractions that house a number of animals. "From farms to racetracks, the potential environmental ramifications of reusing more animal waste as fertilizer are enormous," says Angie Adkins, the grant manager for the Department of Commerce and Community Affairs, which funded nearly half the cost of the . center with a $149,991 matching grant. Uncomplicated in its design, the composting center consists of a plastic- sheathed greenhouse atop a concrete slab. Inside, electric-generated pumps force air through two seven-foot-high mounds of raw compost, which is made by grinding together leaves, plants, hay, grass, straw and manure. Then, the exhaust air is channeled through special vents into a biofilter, made of processed compost mixed with wood chips, outside the greenhouse. The air that percolates up through the biofilter is cleansed naturally and is odorless as it leaves.

The new composting process takes about six weeks and saves the zoo more than $10,000 per year by converting to usable soil animal and plant wastes that would have gone to a landfill. Zoo officials estimate the new facility will generate about 1,000 cubic yards, or 1 million pounds, of compost annually, more than double the current output. The nutrient- rich compost will be used as a low-level fertilizer under trees and shrubs, in flower beds and for maintenance of the zoo's 216 acres.

Beverley Scobell

Newest state park takes visitors back in time

A stroll through Illinois' newest animal preserve won't be just a walk in the park.

But then again, the Wildlife Prairie Park just west of Peoria was never really meant to be a park by conventional standards (see Illinois Issues, September 1996, page 26).

Conservationist and founder William Rutherford created the 2000-acre preserve in 1978 to fulfill his vision restoring Illinois to its prairie" past. The park now abounds in animals and vegetation commonplace to Illinois hundreds of years ago.

From the looks of the park, it seems Illinois hasn't aged. But Rutherford has. He says he's too old to continue running the place.

Legislation approved by the General Assembly this spring brings to a close his longstanding efforts to shift the park from private ownership to state control. The proposed law creates the Illinois Wildlife. : Prairie Park Commission, foundation that will not only maintain the park but also collect public and private money to fund its operations,

Rep. Ricca Slone, a Peoria Heights Democrat who cosponsored the measure, says the takeover would solve financial problems that have plagued the park.

"It really needs more money to be in operation," says Slone. "The legislation will ensure that the park continues to exist."

Frank Vinluan

Illinois Issues July/August 1997 / 11