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The Breakthrough: Reporting on Life and Death in the Delivery Room Jul 28, 2017

Show notes

In the cellphone video, 33-year-old Lauren Bloomstein looks perfectly healthy, radiant even. She is in a hospital room, cradling her newborn baby as her eyes well — a portrait of the miracle of new motherhood.

Hours later, she is dead.

Bloomstein succumbed to preeclampsia, a treatable condition estimated to affect some 200,000 women a year in the U.S.

ProPublica reporter Nina Martin joined NPR’s Renee Montagne and ProPublica’s engagement team to put Bloomstein’s death into a larger context in the story, “The Last Person You’d Expect to Die in Childbirth.” Through their reporting, the team explained how the U.S. health care system sometimes focuses so intently on babies that it ignores mothers, leading to hundreds of preventable deaths every year, from pregnancy to months after birth. They’re still collecting these women’s stories.

Listen to This Episode Photo: Bryan Anselm for ProPublica

On today’s episode of the Breakthrough, Martin describes how she and the team produced the project. She tells us how they scoured Facebook and the crowdfunding website Go Fund Me to find cases of pregnant women and new mothers who perished; how they made dozens of cold calls on a subject that’s beyond sensitive; how the women’s relatives and friends often could not bear to revisit such tragedy.

Finally, she describes how Lauren’s husband, Larry Bloomstein, took the extraordinary step of inviting the reporters into his home, where he recounted his wife’s death with documents and details, and shared that devastating video.

“It was a really shattering moment,” Martin said.

Hear how it all came together on the Breakthrough, the ProPublica podcast where investigative reporters reveal how they nailed their biggest stories.

Have an idea for an episode? Email us your suggestions at podcasts@propublica.org.

Listen to this podcast on iTunes, SoundCloud or Stitcher.

The music for this podcast is from Blue Dot Sessions and Jason Leonard.

The Breakthrough: How an ICIJ Reporter Dug Up the World Bank’s Best Kept Secret Jul 14, 2017

Show notes

by Jessica Huseman

ICIJ reporter Sasha Chavkin had been investigating the World Bank for months when he visited a sweltering military post in Honduras and sat with the colonel. Sasha had heard the Honduran military was violently evicting local peasants to make way for a palm oil plantation — a project funded by the World Bank to boost the local economy. The reporter wanted the colonel to answer for these allegations.

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But the man knew far more than Sasha expected. He knew who Sasha had been speaking to, and where he planned to travel next. He’d even sent his troops ahead of Sasha, to await his arrival. “If you go there,” the colonel said, “I can’t guarantee your safety.”

Sasha was scared, but he went anyway.

He was chasing a big story — that the World Bank was complicit in violently displacing people from their lands in order to make way for development projects all over the world. When Sasha got to the village in Honduras, called Panama, he heard about the brutal treatment of the peasants firsthand. Their land had been stolen from them, and a local priest had been murdered. His body — which showed signs of torture — was found under palm leaves on the land now taken over by the plantation.

This treatment wasn’t isolated to Honduras. Sasha found similar stories across the globe. In Ethiopia, he heard from villagers chased from their land by the Ethiopian military. Women reported being raped; others said they were beaten.

It was all part of what Sasha had been told was the World Bank’s biggest secret: Around 2009, the bank had stopped requiring governments to fill out detailed forms with a census of how many people were being displaced and what was being done to help them. Instead, it allowed governments to say that some people might be displaced, and that details on relocation would be worked out later. Often, the World Bank offered no clear plan to help displaced communities at all.

Using extensive data analysis and on-location reporting, Sasha and his team published a series that spans three continents and details how 3.4 million people were physically or economically displaced by World Bank projects. Five days after Sasha and his team sent questions to the World Bank, World Bank President Kim Jong Kim held a press conference. He said the organization had taken a “hard look” at the resettlement policies and that it would be reforming supervision procedures.

The series is called “Evicted and Abandoned,” and today, Sasha talks with us about what he found and how he found it.

Have an idea for an episode? Email us your suggestions at podcasts@propublica.org.

Listen to this podcast on iTunes, SoundCloud or Stitcher.

The music for this podcast is from Podington Bear and Blue Dot Sessions.

Correction, July 18, 2017: We have updated this piece to reflect a more specific characterization of the treatment of the 3.4 million people impacted by World Bank projects.

The Breakthrough: A Reporter Crosses Borders to Uncover Labor Abuse Jun 30, 2017

Show notes

by Joaquin Sapien

The men on the mountain road in rural Guatemala looked to have averted disaster. Their truck was teetering on a mountainside, but they’d kept it from toppling over with a rig of ropes and tree branches.

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When ProPublica reporter Michael Grabell came upon the scene, he saw a solution to a different sort of problem.

He had been in Guatemala for days, searching for people who had worked for an infamous North Carolina-based chicken company called Case Farms. But until then, he hadn’t had much luck. So he and his driver pulled over to ask the men if they knew of the company. The move worked.

As it turned out, many of the men had worked for Case Farms and knew others who could help Grabell with his story.

It was one of those rare breaks that can make reporting such an adventure, a gamble that can pay off with the right amount of persistence, quick thinking and, sometimes, pure luck.

Grabell wrote about the scene in his recent story for ProPublica and the New Yorker “Sold for Parts,” which shows how Case Farms took advantage of immigrant workers and used America’s laws to silence them when they pushed for better working conditions and medical care.

Today he tells us how he reported the story on The Breakthrough, the ProPublica podcast where investigative reporters reveal how they nailed their biggest stories.

Have an idea for an episode? Email us your suggestions at podcasts@propublica.org.

Listen to this podcast on iTunes, SoundCloud or Stitcher.

The music for this podcast is from Blue Dot Sessions.

The Breakthrough: Uncovering NYC Cops Making Millions in Suspicious Deals Jun 16, 2017

Show notes

by Joaquin Sapien

WNYC radio reporter Robert Lewis had been hounding New York Assistant Police Chief Edward Delatorre for weeks. He’d called. He’d emailed. He’d gone through the New York Public Affairs office. But he was getting nowhere and he had an urgent question.

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Lewis had learned that the assistant chief bought property from a missing loan shark, a man named Vincent “Jimmy” Durso, while the police department was actively investigating Durso’s disappearance. Naturally, Lewis wanted to know why.

So, when he got no answer, he went to building a Delatorre owned in the Bronx. When Lewis confronted him there, Delatorre tried to make a run for it. He had his assistant pull up a car, double park it in front of the building, then he briskly walked out and hopped in the passenger seat.

Lewis trailed him and asked, on tape, several times over: “Why did you buy property from a missing loan shark?”

Delatorre never answered.

It turns out Delatorre’s property purchase was just the tip of the iceberg.

Lewis ultimately learned that dozens of top department officials supplement their income with outside jobs and businesses, some of which, like Delatorre’s, appeared to conflict with, or even emerge from, the department’s work in law enforcement. The stories ultimately prompted two separate investigations, one internally, by the police department itself, and another from the New York City Department of Investigation.

Today Lewis tells us how the story came together in our season-opening episode of The Breakthrough, the ProPublica podcast where investigative reporters reveal how they nailed their biggest stories.

We believe it’s important, now more than ever, to show people how real, in-depth investigative journalism gets done. Our podcast aims to put listeners alongside reporters as they endure sleepless nights, pore over records, cultivate sources and experience all the adrenaline and anxiety that comes with cracking a breakthrough story.

Have an idea for an episode? Email us your suggestions at podcasts@propublica.org.

Listen to this podcast on iTunes, SoundCloud or Stitcher.

The music for this podcast is from Podington Bear.

Our Podcast, The Breakthrough, Is Back Jun 09, 2017

Show notes

by Kate Brown

In January, we launched The Breakthrough — a podcast where investigative reporters reveal how they nailed their biggest stories. And now we’re starting a new season, on June 16.

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This season you’ll hear how one reporter uncovered a story involving a missing loan shark, a mobster and a cop with a questionable side hustle. You’ll also hear how another reporter’s investigation of labor laws took him from a chicken plant in Ohio to a village in the mountains of Guatemala. And, we’ll tell the story of a small news site in Vermont that took on a huge resort developer and prompted a major investigation.

Last season, we asked for your feedback and got lots of great responses. We would love to hear from you again. Tell us what you like, what you haven’t liked and send suggestions of stories we should feature on the show! Email us at podcasts@propublica.org.

We’re really excited about this season and hope you are too. Go to wherever you listen to podcasts and subscribe to the ProPublica Podcast to get the new bi-weekly episodes starting June 16.

We also have a bonus episode for you this week. It’s hosted by one of our recent Emerging Reporters, TyLisa Johnson. She spoke with Carrie Levine from the Center for Public Integrity about campaign finance reporting in the age of Trump.

The ProPublica Emerging Reporter program that TyLisa is a part of gives college students of color mentoring and stipends so they have the financial flexibility and support to do great journalism. It includes ongoing mentorship, a trip to our New York newsroom and a $4,500 stipend per semester. We are accepting applications for our 2018 program now, so apply!

Listen to this podcast on iTunes, SoundCloud or Stitcher.

We Want Your Thoughts on Our Podcast Mar 10, 2017

Show notes

by Joaquin Sapien

Two months ago, we launched The Breakthrough, a podcast where investigative journalists tell us how they nailed their biggest stories.

Our first eight episodes took listeners behind the scenes of reporting from across the globe. We interviewed a reporter in Russia who told us what it was like to face intimidation from the Kremlin, an author who went undercover as a teacher in North Korean schools, and a veteran Mississippi reporter who tracked down an alleged serial killer.

We’re taking a break to think about where we should take the podcast from here. And we want your help.

Tell us about what you want to hear more of, less of, and what, if anything, we might do differently.

To give us the feedback, please take this survey.

The information you give will not only help us improve, it will also help us find sponsors so that we can keep the podcast thriving and well-funded.

Thank you.

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