Liniment Formulae

Heavy pressure; NFL players struggle with weight game

To trace the super-sizing of the NFL athlete, I built a comprehensive database of professional football rosters. Though the report focuses on the modern NFL, the database stretches back to the formation of the American Professional Football Conference in 1920. The database was built by digitally scanning thousands of pages of paper records stored in Canton, Ohio at the Pro Football Hall of Fame.

STORY AND DOWNLOAD LINKS
Main story: Heavy pressure; NFL players struggle with weight game
Sidebar: Pressure to grow burdened Aaron Gibson
Sidebar: NFL monitors weight gain
Interactive: Historical data chart
Print pages in PDF: Right-click and save-as to download (2.0 MB, 4 pages)

RECOGNITION FOR ‘HEAVY PRESSURE’
Honorable mention, project reporting, 2006 Associated Press Sports Editors contest
Second place, enterprise, 2006 Florida Sports Writers Association contest

Mapping the Boom 4: 2006-03-19

The fourth and final installment of the Mapping the Boom series on South Florida’s real estate boom. Without a doubt, the best of the bunch. The hot spot map on the cover of the 56-page special section was created in the spatial statistics program CrimeStat, and took nearly nine hours to process on my old PC. (I later repeated the procedure on my current twin dual-core 64-bit 3.7 GHz Xeon workstation and was done in 26 minutes. Not a bad case for the productivity gains possible with upgraded hardware.)

STORY, MAP AND DOWNLOAD LINKS
Mapping the Boom 4 main page
Palm Beach County interactive map
Martin County interactive map
St. Lucie County interactive map
Hot-spot neighborhoods interactive map
Print pages in PDF: Right-click and save-as to download (11.9 MB, 20 pages)

RECOGNITION FOR ‘MAPPING THE BOOM’
First place, best newspaper real estate section, National Association of Real Estate Editors
First place, real estate reporting, SPJ Sunshine State Awards
First place, special sections, Florida Press Club
First place, special sections, Florida Society of Newspaper Editors

Mapping the Boom 3: 2005-12-18

The third installment of the Mapping the Boom series on South Florida’s real estate boom, updated through the third quarter of 2005. The focus of this 32-page section was on pre-retirees and splitters, Baby Boomers who are buying now in preparation for retirement. The dwindling supply of affordable homes also was covered.

DOWNLOAD THE PRINT SECTION
Print pages in PDF: Right-click and save-as to download (6.6 MB, 11 pages)

RECOGNITION FOR ‘MAPPING THE BOOM’
First place, best newspaper real estate section, National Association of Real Estate Editors
First place, real estate reporting, SPJ Sunshine State Awards
First place, special sections, Florida Press Club
First place, special sections, Florida Society of Newspaper Editors

Mapping the Boom 2: 2005-09-11

The second installment of the Mapping the Boom series, with South Florida real estate data updated through the first half of 2005. This 48-page section focused on some of the side-effects of the housing boom, including investor activity, high turnover and part-time residents. I made interactive maps showing sales activity rates and full-time residency status, but they’re not online anymore.

DOWNLOAD THE PRINT SECTION
Print pages in PDF: Right-click and save-as to download (14.7 MB, 16 pages)

RECOGNITION FOR ‘MAPPING THE BOOM’
First place, best newspaper real estate section, National Association of Real Estate Editors
First place, real estate reporting, SPJ Sunshine State Awards
First place, special sections, Florida Press Club
First place, special sections, Florida Society of Newspaper Editors

Mapping the Boom 1: 2005-05-22

I built custom base maps and analyzed nearly 500,000 home sales to produce this report on the South Florida real estate boom. The results were published in a 48-page (with ads) special section. I also made a series of interactive maps for the web, but they aren’t online anymore.

DOWNLOAD THE PRINT SECTION
Print pages in PDF: Right-click and save-as to download (21.0 MB, 19 pages)

RECOGNITION FOR ‘MAPPING THE BOOM’
First place, best newspaper real estate section, National Association of Real Estate Editors
First place, real estate reporting, SPJ Sunshine State Awards
First place, special sections, Florida Press Club
First place, special sections, Florida Society of Newspaper Editors

Revolving door for fired workers

My colleague Kathleen Chapman and I built a one-of-a-kind, 17,000-record employee database for this investigation of hiring practices in Florida’s mostly outsourced and privatized juvenile justice system. That data allowed us to do what the state could not: Identify at least 200 employees hired by juvenile justice centers even though they had already been fired from similar jobs elsewhere for violence, misconduct or incompetence. The resulting stories prompted state leaders to follow our lead and build their own statewide employee-tracking database, and crack down on companies that refused to share information.

STORY AND DOWNLOAD LINKS
Main story: Revolving door for fired workers
Sidebar: Records crackdown would reveal problem workers
Sidebar: What we found and how we did it
Print pages in PDF: Right-click and save-as to download (1.3 MB, 3 pages)

RECOGNITION FOR ‘REVOLVING DOOR’
Finalist, Freedom of Information Award, Investigative Reporters and Editors
Runner-up, single story, Casey Medals for Meritorious Journalism

Florida lacks jobs for trained researchers

To find out how well Florida retains its college graduates, I compiled information on more than 500,000 graduates of both public and private institutions. For every person who received a degree between 1990 and 2000, I obtained their hometown city, state and ZIP code; current city, state and ZIP code; and degree year, major and level. I also analyzed data from the U.S. Department of Education and the Bureau of Labor Statistics to determine where Florida ranked in the production of key majors and degree types.

STORY AND DOWNLOAD LINKS
Main story: Florida lacks jobs for trained researchers
Print pages in PDF: Right-click and save-as to download (5.4 MB, 2 pages)

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Income gap persists among racial groups

By WILLIAM M. HARTNETT
Palm Beach Post Staff Writer

Higher education is billed as America’s great equalizer, but the economic rewards of a college degree are significantly smaller for minorities than for whites, according to a Palm Beach Post analysis of data recently released by the Census Bureau.

At every level of education – from high school dropouts to people with Ph.D.s – blacks and Hispanics on average make significantly less money than non-Hispanic whites.

Even when the effects of age, occupation and ability to speak English are taken into account, whites consistently have higher incomes. And though the payoff of a four-year or advanced college degree is considerable regardless of race or ethnicity, the country’s largest income disparities occur among those who are most educated.

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Local companies work defensively

By DAVID SEDORE and WILLIAM M. HARTNETT
Palm Beach Post Staff Writers

LANTANA – Carlos Cavanagh has a professional interest in the war in Iraq.

His company, Control Logistics of Lantana, makes most of the windows used on Army helicopters.

“When they land and throw up all that sand, I wonder how long my work is going to last,” Cavanagh says.

Control Logistics is one of more than 100 companies in Palm Beach, Martin and St. Lucie counties that performed work for the U.S. Department of Defense during the federal government’s 2001-02 budget year. Their take: $535 million.

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Study: FCAT more a measure of wealth than performance

This project was done almost entirely on night and weekends, sometimes until well past midnight, while my colleague Kathleen Chapman and I were both beat reporters in The Palm Beach Post’s Martin County bureau. We were flying so far under our editors’ radar back in those days that I was forced to cough up my own money to buy a needed software package. Never got reimbursed.

STORY LINKS
Main story: Study: FCAT more a measure of wealth than performance
Sidebar: Analysis measures score-wealth relationship
Sidebar: Humble roots and a thirst for learning
Sidebar: Talent, expectations push school to top

RECOGNITION FOR ‘FCAT ANALYSIS’
Winner, news feature of issue package, National Awards for Education Reporting