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The company's specially-engineered slides do everything from launch riders into the air to land on foam mattresses and send them over multiple hills.

CLAYTON, Mo. -- The trial of Joseph Dejoie, the man accused of the death of Jacque Mitchell, starts this week. Mitchell was found dead in Dejoie's Maryland Heights apartment. Dejoie faces charges including second-degree murder, tampering with evidence, and abandonment of a corpse. Mitchell's family reported her missing from St. Charles in March of last [...]

When Heather Roth’s daughter, Margaret, asked to have cotton candy at her sixth birthday party instead of cake, she knew she had to make it happen.  “I had to figure out how the hell I was going to make cotton candy,” she says. “That’s basically how Rosie Cheeks and the whole concept of the cart started — by being an experience for her and her friends.”

The conservative outrage express is barreling hard toward the school board governing the Lindbergh School District, courtesy of a political action committee run by Martin Bennet, a Des Peres man who is the regional manager of an Internet services company that markets to schools. Direct mail flyers began appearing in the mailboxes of Lindbergh voters last week that were paid for by the St. Louis County Family Association Political Action Committee, which Bennett launched in January. The flyers promote the candidacies of David Randelman and David Kirschner, who are among the four candidates vying for the two seats on the eight-member board at stake in the April 2 election.

Missouri lawmakers return to the Capitol Monday with a long list of policy priorities still in flux and only eight weeks to get it all done before the legislative session ends in May. Yet despite a host of issues dominating debate during the first half of the session, the two top tasks lawmakers must complete […]

The post Budget, Medicaid funding could dominate final weeks of Missouri legislative session appeared first on Missouri Independent.

A St. Louis jury has awarded $750,000 to Beverly Buck Brennan, the daughter of the late St. Louis Cardinals broadcaster, Jack Buck.

As we come to the close of Women’s History Month, we have remembered and celebrated women who have broken barriers and made contributions in many areas in our society. But where does motherhood fit among the contributions to be honored? Motherhood should be among the first professions and accomplishments to be recognized. Your immediate thought […]

The post Where does motherhood fit in our Women’s History Month celebrations? appeared first on Missouri Independent.

The body of a missing 19-year-old was found, shot Saturday, in an abandoned home. This discovery came days after Daniel Nunn's family reported him missing.

ST. LOUIS -- Gusty winds continue this morning. Winds may gust to 40 mph or higher by sunrise. A wind advisory has been issued for 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. today. Our next storm system is moving in. Rain showers have made their way to our westernmost counties here early this morning. The rain will [...]

The 2024 Missouri Legislative Session resumes today after a week away from the Capitol. With only roughly two months left in the end of session, GOP priorities include passing a resolution that if later approved by voters, would make it harder to amend the state’s constitution as well as measures on education and crime.

Posted at the site were inspection reports, dating to 1945, warning of excessive dust, bad ventilation and high risk of explosion.

Brenda Morrison has been giving her community in Bevo Mill access to free literature for 10 years.

The newly reimagined version of The Who's Tommy is set to open on Broadway Thursday, and director Des McAnuff, who also directed the original production, says the idea to bring it back…

Source

by Vianna Davila, Melissa Sanchez, Liz Sharp and Myron Avant

ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up to receive our biggest stories as soon as they’re published.

ProPublica is committed to increasing the diversity of our workplace as well as the journalism community more broadly, and each year we publish a report on those efforts. This is the report for 2024; here are all our past reports.

Our Commitment

We believe that it is imperative to staff our newsroom and business operations with people from a broad range of backgrounds, ages and perspectives. We are committed to recruiting and retaining people from communities that have long been underrepresented, in journalism broadly and in investigative journalism especially. That includes African Americans, Latinos, other people of color, women, LGBTQ people and people with disabilities.

ProPublica has continued to expand, growing from 172 full-time employees at the start of 2023 to 186 in 2024, due in part to the creation of our Northwest team and additions to our development, audience and visual teams.

Our diversity efforts last year were wide-ranging, with the launch of an investigative editor training program that is open to journalists across the U.S., a large presence at journalism affinity conferences and a webinar for former conference stipend recipients and other early career journalists who have participated in previous ProPublica programs.

We also continued to formalize some of our formerly staff-run, volunteer diversity efforts, built partnerships with outside journalism organizations and looked for ways to improve the internal culture and processes for all ProPublicans.

Our Diversity Committee comprises more than 50 ProPublicans who volunteer their time to work on initiatives that are pitched and run by the staff. The current co-chairs are Vianna Davila, Melissa Sanchez and Liz Sharp.

Breakdown of Our Staff

As with last year, we tracked candidates through the application and interview process. Out of 21 positions filled in 2023, 50% of the candidates we interviewed identified as women and 36% identified as being part of a racial/ethnic group other than solely non-Hispanic white. About 67% of the people we hired identified as women.

However, 29% of those people we hired in 2023 identified as being part of a racial/ethnic group other than solely non-Hispanic white — a lower percentage than ProPublica had hired in previous years.

"Recruiting and retaining a diverse staff is one of ProPublica's core principles,” said ProPublica editor-in-chief Stephen Engelberg, responding to the hiring numbers. “We are proud of the progress we've made, but we agree that there's more to be done.”

This year, Engelberg said, ProPublica added a full-time talent acquisition manager “to make sure our job searches reach the broadest possible group of applicants."

At the start of 2024, the percentage of all ProPublica staff members who identified as solely non-Hispanic white was 62% — slightly higher than in previous years. This percentage was the same for editorial positions.

For the sixth year in a row, more women than men work at ProPublica. About 2% of our staff identify as nonbinary or transgender. In editorial positions, women represented 51% of the staff.

Since 2022, we have collected demographic information about our board of directors. Half of the 14 people on the board identified as women, the same as last year. About 64% of the directors identified as non-Hispanic white, compared to 71% last year.

As we’ve said since 2015, part of our commitment to diversity means being transparent about our own numbers. Here’s how our staff breaks down.

(Please note that the data is based on employees’ self-reported information. Recognizing that some people may identify as more than one race but not identify as a person of color, in 2022 we began stating numbers in terms of people who “solely identify as non-Hispanic white.” We hope this will provide more specificity and accuracy. The employee information is as of Jan. 1 of each year. Managers are defined as staff members who supervise other people, and that group does not include all editors. Percentages may not add up to 100 because of rounding. Fellows, time-limited employees and part-time employees are not included in this analysis.)

Race and Ethnicity: All of ProPublica Note: Fellows, time-limited employees and part-time employees are not included in this analysis. Race and Ethnicity: Editorial Note: Fellows, time-limited employees and part-time employees are not included in this analysis. Race and Ethnicity: Managers Note: Fellows, time-limited employees and part-time employees are not included in this analysis. Gender: All of ProPublica Note: Fellows, time-limited employees and part-time employees are not included in this analysis. Gender: Editorial Note: Fellows, time-limited employees and part-time employees are not included in this analysis. Gender: Managers Note: Fellows, time-limited employees and part-time employees are not included in this analysis. New Initiatives

Investigative editor training: ProPublica started an Investigative Editor Training Program in 2023 for journalists who want to learn how to manage, edit and elevate investigative projects that expose harm and create impact. The curriculum for the yearlong program was designed by ProPublica chief of correspondents Ginger Thompson and deputy managing editor Alexandra Zayas to increase diversity in the next generation of investigative editors. We did a test-run for the program for nine ProPublica staffers. Then we refined the training and invited journalists from other organizations to apply. More than 150 reporters and editors from news organizations across the country applied. We selected 11 people to attend a weeklong training at our New York office, where they heard from ProPublica editors on different aspects of the craft, from story selection and memos to managing the reporting and digging into the first draft. After that, participants were paired with ProPublica senior staff as mentors and received additional virtual training for the remainder of the year. We are offering this training again this year for external participants.

Alumni virtual meetup: After a hiatus in 2022, ProPublica staff hosted a career-building webinar for “alumni” of our various external programs, including Emerging Reporters, the Data Institute and our conference stipends. Irena Hwang, Maya Miller and Ellis Simani volunteered their time to organize this event and surveyed alumni about what kinds of skills they wanted to build. The virtual event, held in September, included a panel on “building your investigative career” featuring Ginger Thompson, Zahira Torres, Lulu Ramadan and Kavitha Surana. That was followed by breakout rooms on workshopping a pitch, managing up, specialty reporting and becoming an editor. More than 50 early-to-mid-career journalists attended the event, and more than a half-dozen ProPublicans lent their expertise as breakout-room moderators. Our goal is to continue to build on the success of this program in 2024 and provide another opportunity for community members to come together.

Our Ongoing Efforts

ProPublica thinks about its efforts in the following ways: building the pipeline (for us and for all of investigative journalism); recruiting talent and improving our hiring process; and inclusion and retention.

Building the Pipeline

Conference stipends: ProPublica previously offered stipends to help student journalists attend conferences. Last year we changed this program to instead partner with Investigative Reporters & Editors (IRE) and sponsor five journalists to attend the annual IRE convention. IRE’s diversity scholarship supports journalists, students and educators from diverse backgrounds, including people of color, those who identify as part of the LGBTQ+ community and/or people with disabilities. We also sponsored a Journalists of Color mixer at the conference, which was attended by more than 50 people.

Emerging Reporters Program: The program provides financial assistance and mentorship to five students for whom investigative journalism might otherwise be inaccessible so they can pursue early career opportunities in the field. The program includes a $9,000 stipend, virtual programming and an all-expenses paid trip to an IRE conference on computer assisted reporting. This is the program’s ninth year, and it is coordinated by Talia Buford. Check out our most recent class and find out more about the program.

Data Institute: In 2016, ProPublica journalists founded The Data Institute, a workshop for journalists on how to use data, design and code. ProPublica eventually started working with Open News, which coordinates student and instructor participation and provides support for project management and event planning. The Ida B. Wells Society for Investigative Reporting and the Center for Journalism & Democracy now organize this in-person event. Last year a half-dozen current and former ProPublicans served as trainers at the institute, which is focused on empowering people with data skills they can bring back to their own newsrooms. ProPublica staffers will continue to serve as trainers at the institute this year.

Recruiting and Hiring

Affinity conferences: Last summer, ProPublica newsroom staff and senior leadership partnered with The Marshall Project and The Trace at the country’s three largest affinity journalism conferences. At the Asian American Journalists Association conference, the three organizations hosted a panel about paths into nonprofit news that also included participation from a staffer at the Center for Public Integrity. The panel was followed by a beverage lounge, where anyone could drop by for refreshments. The organizations hosted a reception at the National Association of Black Journalists conference, put on through the convention’s Investigative Task Force, that included journalists from The Texas Tribune and The Intercept. ProPublica staff also participated in three conference sessions focused on investigative reporting. At the National Association of Hispanic Journalists conference, the three journalism organizations hosted a booth along with The Texas Tribune, The Intercept and CPI. This work was led by ProPublica staffers Maya Miller, Irena Hwang and Ellis Simani. Going forward, ProPublica’s talent department will assume responsibility for this work.

Salary equity and transparency: ProPublica management regularly analyzes salaries in job categories where there are at least four employees and, when necessary, adjusts those salaries to ensure equity by race and gender in each job and location group, while taking into account years of experience. This analysis started in 2021. We do this because we want to try to eliminate the effects of any unconscious bias in setting salaries. In addition, since the fall of 2022, ProPublica has published salary ranges for all posted job openings, regardless of geography.

Rooney Rule: We require that hiring managers interview at least one person who does not self-identify as solely non-Hispanic white. In addition, every application must be read by at least two people.

Freelancer guide: In 2022, ProPublica published a guide for freelancers interested in pitching an investigation to ProPublica. We designed the guide to formalize the pitch process and level the playing field for how freelance projects are presented and considered. Submissions will be reviewed by editors on a rotating basis. ProPublica will respond to anyone who completes the form, even if their proposal is not accepted.

LRN candidate outreach: Editors with ProPublica’s Local Reporting Network continued to do personalized recruiting and offered office hours so local journalists could discuss their accountability work with a member of the team. LRN editors were also present at affinity journalism conferences, where they met with interested applicants in an effort to help them with the project-development and application process.

Inclusion and Retention

Welcoming new hires and focusing on internal culture: Our inclusion subcommittee includes about 30 ProPublicans who meet monthly to consider ways to make the newsroom more inclusive and equitable. Duaa Eldeib chairs this subcommittee. Some of the issues the group has been tackling include ways to improve ProPublica’s fact-checking process and build community, particularly for employees who work remotely. The subcommittee launched an internal story club that meets regularly to discuss particularly enjoyable stories, podcasts or books.

Sensitivity subcommittee: Led by Colleen Barry and Andrea Wise, this group serves as a resource for editors and reporters to tap the collective brain trust of our newsroom when working on particularly sensitive stories about suicide, sexual abuse, child abuse, racial trauma and more. The committee maintains a Slack channel where anyone can share resources and where editors and reporters can solicit feedback on drafts or ask questions on how best to report on sensitive subjects. When a “sensitivity read” or the discussions during the editing and production of a story are particularly instructive, the subcommittee has shared those experiences at diversity committee meetings so any lessons can be more broadly applied.

ProPublica Peer Partnership Program: This is an internal program organized by Jodi Cohen and Lisa Song that matches ProPublicans with a mentor or peer partner to meet each other, develop new skills and have someone to turn to for help navigating workplace or career questions. Last year more than 50 ProPublicans participated in this program, which was started in 2018.

Unconscious bias training: Since 2021, ProPublica has contracted with Paradigm Reach to provide ongoing diversity, equity and inclusion training for staff. The training is required of all new managers.

Diversity Committee office hours: We have continued to offer a casual virtual hangout twice a month where ProPublicans can chat with the Diversity Committee co-chairs to brainstorm about diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives, ask questions about ProPublica’s ongoing DEI programs or chat about diversity-related concerns in a more intimate setting outside of the monthly committee meetings.

Interested in Working Here?

Here is our jobs page, where we post new positions, including fellowships, full-time and temporary roles.

Chancellor Thomas H. Eliot stopped St. Louis County police officers from following a group of dissident students across the campus.

An all-too-rare organization of Israeli Palestinians and Jews works for an unfantastical solution to the enduring conflict.

by Patrick Lohmann, Source New Mexico

This article was produced in partnership with Source New Mexico, which was a member of ProPublica’s Local Reporting Network in 2023. Sign up for Dispatches to get stories like this one as soon as they are published.

In February 2023, I signed a lease on a dusty studio apartment in Las Vegas, New Mexico, two hours from my apartment in Albuquerque and just outside the burn scar of the largest wildfire in New Mexico history. Based on the railroad ties that served as “vigas,” or ceiling beams, my landlord told me my new home had likely been built in the late 1800s.

The rural communities in the mountains of northern New Mexico have long been wary of outsiders. More than a century ago, a band of white-capped marauders on horseback, known as the Gorras Blancas, rode through the countryside to fight back against the predominantly white speculators and railroad barons taking over the land. The Gorras Blancas cut through newly built fences dividing shared pastureland, known as the “ejido,” and burned piles of railroad ties. But they failed to repel the newcomers, who built Victorian homes on what became the town’s well-to-do east side.

My apartment was on the historically Hispanic, lower-income west side. I had moved there at the beginning of a yearlong collaboration between my newsroom, Source New Mexico, and ProPublica to examine the area’s recovery from the fire. The federal government had accidentally triggered the blaze; now the Federal Emergency Management Agency was in charge of distributing checks to compensate people for the government’s mistake. I knew some survivors wouldn’t appreciate being interviewed by someone they perceived as an outsider, even though I’m from New Mexico and have lived here most of my life. For the next year, my job was to gain their trust.

The fire had broadened divisions among residents: between those who had suffered and those who had been spared; between those who had money to rebuild and those who had to wait for a check from FEMA; between those angry at how long it was taking to be paid and those who had taken jobs with FEMA to help process their neighbors’ claims.

The Big Burnout: Wildland Firefighters and the West

Join Source New Mexico reporter Patrick Lohmann on March 26 for a virtual discussion about New Mexico’s grindingly slow recovery from the state’s biggest wildfire and the exodus of wildland firefighters from the U.S. Forest Service.

I introduced myself to the community in a column published in the weekly newspaper, the Optic, asking people to get in touch. I then set about speaking to anyone willing to open up about the trauma of the disaster, what they saw as a painfully slow release of compensation funds and disaster aid, their fears about losing their culture and their realization that this place had permanently changed. That meant showing up early to public meetings at high school gyms, carrying a stack of business cards and speaking with frustrated survivors until janitors threatened to turn off the lights.

And I worked the phones. After a bit of pestering, a county assessor marked down all the houses she knew had been lost in the fire. I called every property owner, often reaching people who were living far away until they could rebuild or were making do in RVs, friends’ homes, and even, in one case, a tent. Many people were reluctant to talk; some said it was too painful to discuss what they had been through.

One man pretended to speak only Spanish to get me off the phone; I spoke just enough Spanish to convince him to chat with me in English. He taught me a Spanish phrase with a special meaning for those who speak a disappearing dialect unique to the region: “No le busques tres pies del gato sabiendo que tiene quatro.” It means, “Don’t look for three legs on a cat knowing it has four.” He meant it both as a joke and a warning: Tread carefully. He turned out to be friendly, later showing me around his damaged property.

People soon began to recognize me around town. They invited me to sit down and listen in on conversations they were having about the fire that had changed their lives and the long recovery that now consumed their attention. (FEMA officials have said they worked as quickly as they could on a mission that is far different from their typical job of providing short-term disaster aid.)

Many of those conversations reflected the randomness of this disaster, in which some properties were burned to their foundations and others were untouched. Some people had survivors’ guilt; others nursed bitterness. I remember when Juan Ortiz, a rancher, told me that someone with a second home in the area had complained about his own house being spared; the man had hoped to collect the insurance money. Ortiz was devastated over the loss of his home and livelihood. He wished he still had his father’s book collection.

Juan Ortiz displays a photograph of his family’s home in Rociada, New Mexico, taken before the Hermits Peak-Calf Canyon Fire destroyed the house, his barns and acres of trees. (Adria Malcolm for ProPublica)

Byard Duncan, an engagement reporter with ProPublica, came out to help in June, about five months after my arrival. We recorded public service announcements and participated in call-in shows on local radio stations, went to church services and set up a folding table at a farmers market in Las Vegas. By then, we knew that the region’s spotty internet access was a barrier to getting people to fill out an online form that we had posted in English and Spanish. We drove over and around the mountains, passing out more than 300 flyers with our contact information at diners, gas stations, grocery stores and post offices.

Byard Duncan, left, and Patrick Lohmann asked locals to share their stories at a farmers market in Las Vegas, New Mexico. (Courtesy of Byard Duncan)

Over those months, I observed the recovery up close. I drove to and from interviews on roads still washed out from the floods that followed the fire. Panicked survivors called me when a small wildfire started in Las Tusas, in an area that had been untouched by the blaze the year before. Like my neighbors, I watched the horizon for storm clouds, wary of the flooding that had become common because the fire-scarred soil couldn’t absorb rainwater. Notices were regularly dropped in my mailbox warning of potential contaminants in the city’s water supply, which had been polluted after the fire.

The many people who generously spoke with us — more than 100 over the course of the year — were vital to our work. The Optic, which has a print circulation of about 3,000, published all our major stories. That’s where most of our sources read them.

Donato Sena, an elderly man who lost his home in the hard-hit village of Rociada, was familiar with my reporting on the fire when I met him. Over the course of several conversations, he told me how grueling life had been in the last year. He and several other survivors had testified in depositions about their losses because they were concerned they would die before they were paid.

Sena had been through four bouts of cancer, which was then in remission. But one day in November, as I was nearing the end of my lease, he collapsed while carrying groceries into his temporary home. The day he died, his wife later told me, he was hopeful he’d be able to move into their new manufactured home on their old property by Christmas.

Maria Luisa Sena sits with a photo of her husband, Donato Sena, in their temporary home. In the photo, Donato Sena stands in front of a replacement mobile home, which the couple bought with their savings while they waited for the federal government to pay for their losses in the Hermits Peak-Calf Canyon Fire that destroyed their old home. (Patrick Lohmann/Source New Mexico)

I heard about his death a day later from a volunteer for a group that donated money to survivors struggling to get by. Over the next few days, four friends of his invited me to his memorial service.

I left my notebook in my car when I arrived at a historic church near the Las Vegas plaza to pay my respects alongside more than 100 others. As Sena’s casket was carried to a hearse, I nodded in acknowledgment to those who followed, people I’d met over the past year: his lawyer, volunteers for the aid group, two others who lost their homes, a columnist for the Optic and various local officials. A few days later, Sena’s widow and their daughter graciously invited me into their home for an interview.

After the funeral, I drove back to my apartment to find a chicken roosting on my patio chair. I walked around the block, seeking her owner. Neighbors told me she might’ve belonged to a guy who recently moved away. I posted to a local Facebook group, and within 15 minutes four folks offered to take her in. A man who lived up the street arrived in a pickup truck. We chatted about the fire, the sort of small talk that had become part of practically every conversation I had there. He tucked the chicken under his arm, and I got back to work.

The burn scar viewed from the Hermits Peak summit in May 2023 (Patrick Lohmann/Source New Mexico)

Patrick is still working on the story of the wildfire and its aftermath. Send him tips at PLohmann@SourceNM.com.

The former Ohio congressman is leveraging his prior career for a group backed by fossil fuel and petrochemical industry players.

The state is spending big on adapting to sea level rise, but Republicans don't want to name the cause.

As much as I would prefer to pretend that a good four months hasn’t elapsed since my last blog update, I feel obliged to attempt some kind of explanation. The truth, sadly, is that I have been very lazy and didn’t feel like it. Instead of blogging, I have been doing my best to keep […]