I See IG

IG audits: gotta love 'em.
A slow Friday, one weekender already filed. I go cruising through the Inspector General home-pages, www.ignet.gov It's reporting by wandering around; or, at least, clicking around. I find a new Agriculture Department IG new audit on wetlands reserve program. Sounds promising, I open it up...and discover the audit includes California wetlands. A local angle; Oh, frabjous day!
The result is a reminder that IG audits are worth perusing regularly. The quickly turned-around story, http://www.mcclatchydc.com/staff/michael_doyle/story/52812.html started with this lede:

WASHINGTON -- The Agriculture Department is paying landowners to conserve wetlands but failing to monitor the results, investigators warn in a new report.
One result arose in the Sacramento Valley, where investigators uncovered trash piled up on property for which the Agriculture Department had purchased a conservation easement.

Getting Inside the Newsmaking Loop

Military minds speak of getting inside the decision-making loop of the adversary: to know it, anticipate it and possibly disrupt it. The accelerating news cycle enables newsmakers to do the same. Here's what I mean:

Andy Stone is the capable press secretary for Rep. Jerry McNerney, D-Calif. He pitched me persistently, but appropriately, about doing a story on a Sept 6 congressional hearing that Rep. McNerney had requested in Stockton. He convinced me, though the story I did played up the politics of the event, http://www.mcclatchydc.com/257/story/51871.html
I filed the story at about 2 pm Sept. 5, for use in the Sept. 6 Bee newspapers. The McClatchy DC bureau posted it on the bureau's web site about 3 pm Sept. 5. Within an hour, Andy had called me to comment on the story. And all of this, mind you, is happening a day before the story appears in the actual, you know, newspaper. In at least one other recent occasion, a similar thing happened in which the real-timer commenter alerted me to a mistake in the Web version that I was then able to correct for the print version.

John Edwards' Shadow: Audio

Lisa Zagaroli, Washington correspondent for the Charlotte Observer, talks about the challenges of covering former vice presidential candidate, and reputed hound dog, John Edwards. We can learn from Lisa's use of some classic reporting techniques, including stakeouts and document searches.
Boomp3.com