Bits, Bytes and Barks
Putting the heat on pensions
At New York Newsday, reporter Joe Calderone wrote about certain firefighters who seemed to have won excessive disability pensions. When the newspaper closed, he moved over to the New York Daily News, and continued his investigation with another ex-Newsday reporter, Russ Buettner. Together, they decided to probe the entire disability pension system for firefighters. "We wanted to look at the context of what was going on," Buettner said.
The reporters negotiated more than three months with the New York State Comptroller, using the state freedom of information law, for firefighter pension data. The database included more than 14,000 retirees, and about seven columns of information.
The reporters, already familiar with much about how the pension system worked and how the information was coded, needed about two days to analyze the data using FoxPro. "The analysis was simple," according to Buettner.
The result was a story that ran Dec. 18 showing how one of every two ex-firefighters collected disability pensions. That included the fire department's own retired doctors.
Also, nearly four of every 10 pocketed lucrative line-of-duty pensions. That included one firefighter who injured his ankle after tripping on a crack in the sidewalk outside a firehouse.
The reporters also showed how the Fire Department brass won line-of-duty benefits more than front-line firefighters. And New York firefighters won line-of-duty pensions more often than their counterparts in the state's other big cities. That point was highlighted with a chart that showed New York's wide gap with Yonkers, Buffalo, Rochester and Syracuse. Russ Buettner can be reached at (212) 210-1964, or send e-mail to rbnews@pipeline.com.
Reisner new training director
The National Institute for Computer-Assisted Reporting has appointed Neil Reisner as its training director. Reisner will be in charge of NICAR's on-the-road training seminars that last year provided training for more than 3,000 journalists throughout the country. He will report to Brant Houston, NICAR's managing director.
An award-winning journalist with two decades of experience and a journalism educator, Reisner most recently served as database editor with The Bergen Record of Hackensack, N.J. During six years there he served in The Record's statehouse bureau and as a regional reporter. Reisner previously worked at The Home News in New Brunswick, N.J.
He has taught journalism at Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism and at Rutgers University.
Keep up with NICAR on-line
Subscribe to our listserve and join in as reporters talk about how to do the job better. E-mail to LISTSERV@MIZZOU1.MISSOURIEDU In the message, on the first line, write: subscribe NICAR-L your name. To join IRE on the Internet, the instructions are the same except, on first line, write: subscribe ire-1 your name.
IRE/NICAR is also accessible through CompuServe's Journalism Forum. Go to the JForum, Section 19. Also look into the IRE/NICAR files in Library 19.