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Rural lenders, crop insurance agents push for bolstered safety net at farm bill hearing

MoInd 📰
2 years ago

WASHINGTON — Rural bank executives and crop insurance agents testified at a Thursday Senate hearing in support of a modernized crop insurance market that helps upstart producers manage growing risks, and supports food security. The witnesses told the Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry that crop insurance represents one of the most important financial […]

The post Rural lenders, crop insurance agents push for bolstered safety net at farm bill hearing appeared first on Missouri Independent.

Adam Goldstein

ProPublica Selects 11 for Investigative Editor Training

ProPublica
2 years ago

by Talia Buford

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

We are excited to announce the names of the 11 distinguished journalists chosen to launch ProPublica’s new investigative editor training program.

The ProPublica Investigative Editor Training Program was established to expand the ranks of editors with investigative experience in newsrooms across the country, with a focus on journalists from underrepresented backgrounds.

This program is funded by the Jonathan Logan Family Foundation, which supports journalism, film and arts organizations whose work is dedicated to social justice and strengthening democracy.

Participants will undergo a five-day intensive editing boot camp in New York, with courses and panel discussions led by ProPublica’s senior editors. After the boot camp, participants will gather virtually every two months for continuing development seminars and be assigned a ProPublica senior editor as a mentor for advice on their work and careers.

We’re encouraged by the response we’ve received for this effort. All told, 159 people applied for 10 advertised slots for this year’s training. The applicants represented a broad array of news organizations across the country. And due to their impressive credentials, we added one more slot than we’d initially planned.

“This is an exciting moment for both ProPublica and the field of investigative journalism,’’ said Stephen Engelberg, editor-in-chief of ProPublica. “The breadth of our applicant pool demonstrates the deep interest in publications at every level in developing the skills that will give readers the in-depth reporting our democracy so desperately needs.’’

We’re thrilled to introduce the inaugural cohort of the ProPublica Investigative Editor Training Program:

Maha Ahmed is managing editor at Type Investigations, where she runs its fact-checking operation, develops newsroom processes and edits climate, labor,and other stories. Previously, she was Type's head of research. Ahmed also spent several years as a fact-checker, researcher, reporter or editor at a range of other newsrooms, including The Intercept, Mother Jones, In These Times, South Side Weekly and the Invisible Institute. She's spoken at IRE and NICAR, in journalism school classes and to other newsrooms about fact-checking and research methods. She is based in Brooklyn and was born in Houston.

Melissa Barragán Taboada is the editor of The Boston Globe’s Great Divide education team. She previously worked as a reporter and editor at the Austin American-Statesman, where she spearheaded the paper’s education coverage. Taboada also taught a "Reporting on Education" course at the School of Journalism at the University of Texas at Austin, her alma mater.

Meghann D. Garcia is managing editor of the Uvalde Leader-News, which has won South Texas Press Association Sweepstakes honors six times over the last eight years. She joined the newspaper staff in 2008 as a production assistant and worked as a staff writer and assistant editor before taking on her present role in 2013. Garcia has won multiple regional and state press association awards for news and feature writing and page design. A lifelong resident of Uvalde County, she earned a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Texas at Austin in 2008 and an Associate of Arts from Southwest Texas Junior College in Uvalde in 2005.

Maia Hibbett is the managing editor at New York Focus, a statewide nonprofit investigative newsroom. She has written for The Nation and The Baffler, as well as for The Intercept, where she was previously an editor. She is interested in the way politics affect people across the world, particularly in the realm of contemporary imperialism and the military-industrial complex. Hibbett is from central Massachusetts and lives in Brooklyn.

Lori Higgins is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Detroit. She is an award-winning longtime education reporter, having worked for nearly two decades as a K-12 reporter for the Detroit Free Press. Prior to that, she covered education for the Green Bay Press Gazette and the Manhattan (Kansas) Mercury. At Chalkbeat, she supervises coverage of the Detroit Public Schools Community District, one of the most troubled in the nation, as well as state education policy issues and statewide trends in K-12 schools.

Tracy Jan is a deputy health and science editor at The Washington Post, where she collaborates with reporters who cover the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, medical misinformation, abortion, long COVID and other health accountability stories. She joined The Post in December 2016 to launch a beat on the intersection of race and the economy, producing work that delved deeply into reparations for slavery, systemic racism in America and the economic and health impact of the coronavirus pandemic on Black, Asian, Latino and immigrant communities. She was previously a reporter at The Boston Globe. She was a 2015 Knight-Wallace Fellow at the University of Michigan, as well as a Fulbright Fellow in Taiwan. Her work has been recognized by the George Polk Awards, the National Association of Black Journalists, the National Headliner Awards, the Online News Association and the Asian American Journalists Association.

Brendan Klinkenberg is an executive editor at Gimlet Media. He's edited stories about Harlem rappers, Russian hackers, art thieves, domestic terror cells and tech utopias gone awry. Prior to Gimlet, Brendan was an editor at Rolling Stone and Complex, and a reporter for BuzzFeed News (RIP) and Wired. He lives in Brooklyn.

Hayat Norimine is the accountability editor for the Idaho Statesman in Boise and oversees reporters who cover politics, education, the outdoors, criminal justice and investigations. She's the local editor on a 2023 ProPublica Local Reporting Network project examining Idaho's dilapidated school facilities. Before she became an editor, she covered state politics in Idaho and city halls in Dallas, Seattle and Southwest Washington. Hayat immigrated to the U.S. with her family at age 4 and grew up in Eastern Washington. She holds an English degree from the University of Washington and a master's in journalism from Northwestern University.

Lillian M. Ortiz is the managing editor at Shelterforce, a national nonprofit publication that aims to inform and hold accountable those working toward more just and equitable communities. Before joining Shelterforce, Lillian was editor of the Verona-Cedar Grove Times, an award-winning publication in New Jersey. Throughout her career, Lillian has earned dozens of honors for her reporting, layout and design and photography.

Dalila-Johari Paul is the national editor at Capital B, where she manages a growing team of reporters from across the country, covering politics, criminal justice, health and other beats. She previously worked at CNN Digital, where she led the race and equality team and, before that, was the overnight supervisor overseeing late night and early morning news coverage. She’s also held multiple editorial positions at the Guardian US, the Star-Ledger in New Jersey and the Hartford Courant in Connecticut.

Elaine Teng is a senior editor in ESPN's investigative and enterprise unit, where she works on breaking news, longform features and cross-platform projects. She was previously a writer and editor at ESPN The Magazine, where she covered soccer, Olympic sports, esports, tennis and action sports, and the managing editor of The New Republic. Her work has been recognized by the National Magazine Awards and anthologized in The Best American Sports Writing. A California native, she now fully embraces the New England seasons. In her free time, she sings in a choir, plays intense games of Settlers of Catan and tries to make the perfect mapo tofu.

by Talia Buford

West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice Runs for Senate Amid Stacks of Unpaid Bills

ProPublica
2 years ago

by Ken Ward Jr., Mountain State Spotlight

This article was produced for ProPublica’s Local Reporting Network in partnership with Mountain State Spotlight. Sign up for Dispatches to get stories like this one as soon as they are published.

For years, West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice has been dogged by allegations that his family businesses haven’t paid their debts, including fines for environmental violations at their coal plants. One bank is even seeking to garnish his salary as governor to cover an unpaid personal guarantee of a business loan, court documents show.

But these disputes are likely to resurface in what will be one of the most hotly contested races for control of the U.S. Senate in 2024. Last week, Justice, a Republican who is immensely popular in the state, announced that he will challenge U.S. Sen. Joe Manchin, a Democrat who is often the swing vote on key legislation.

A review by ProPublica in 2020 found that, over three decades, Justice’s constellation of mining, farming and hospitality companies were involved in over 600 lawsuits in more than two dozen states. Many were filed by workers, vendors, business partners and government agencies, alleging they weren’t paid. Often, similar cases were filed in multiple jurisdictions, as lawyers for plaintiffs tried to chase down a Justice company’s assets to settle debts.

By late 2020, the total in judgments and settlements for Justice family businesses had reached $140 million, ProPublica and Mountain State Spotlight found.

Since then, his family business empire has faced more turmoil. Lenders are trying to hold him personally responsible for hundreds of millions in debt. Courts are ordering payment of long-standing environmental penalties.

Neither representatives for Justice nor the family’s businesses responded to a request for comment. In the past, Justice has said that he and his family companies always pay what they owe. The governor has said that his businesses don’t create any conflicts of interest and that he didn’t run for office to get anything for himself.

Justice inherited a coal fortune from his father and expanded it to an empire of agricultural companies and resort hotels, including The Greenbrier, a posh, historic resort located in a valley where southern West Virginia’s mountains meet western Virginia’s rolling hills.

Last week, Justice used The Greenbrier as the backdrop for his announcement that he would seek the Republican nomination, facing U.S. Rep. Alex Mooney in the GOP primary. (Manchin has not announced a reelection bid yet, but in response to questions about Justice he said, “Make no mistake, I will win any race I enter.”)

As we documented, the resort has been at the heart of various conflicts of interest, as major trade associations that lobby state government for their industries have held meetings and conferences there.

And just two days before Justice’s Senate announcement, another of his resorts, Glade Springs, was the subject of state Supreme Court arguments in a case in which the resort homeowners’ association is seeking $6.6 million in property upkeep fees from one of Justice’s companies, which owns lots at the resort.

When he became governor in 2017, Justice said he was turning control of his family businesses over to his adult children. But our investigation found that, while governor, he continued to steer the empire.

In his political campaigns, Justice frequently touted his experience as a businessman and said that his long career in coal and other industries made him suited for the role of West Virginia’s chief executive.

Justice’s coal operations have also been repeatedly pressed to settle allegations of significant pollution problems in deals with regulators, yet the environmental violations have continued. Last month, a federal appeals court ruled that Justice companies must pay $2.5 million in environmental fines. Lawyers for the companies had argued the fines were the result of a misreading of an earlier settlement.

In December, an industrial plant owned by Justice’s family agreed to pay nearly $1 million in fines after releasing excessive air pollution into Black neighborhoods in Birmingham, Alabama. An attorney who works with the Justice family said the consent order would “provide the certainty that the company needs to complete its evaluation of the plant’s future.”

For years, Justice had been considered West Virginia’s richest man and listed by Forbes as a billionaire. But in 2021, Forbes removed that listing. The magazine cited a dispute over $850 million in debt to the now-defunct firm Greensill Capital.

The Justice companies settled that dispute with a payment plan. But last week a longtime banking partner of Justice’s, Carter Bank & Trust, filed documents seeking to collect on a separate $300 million debt. Justice’s son, Jay Justice, said in a statement that the bank had refused a reasonable repayment plan.

by Ken Ward Jr., Mountain State Spotlight