State House Sting
Many newspapers and broadcast stations have cut back their coverage of the doings in state capitals in recent years. That can be a huge mistake, as the dedicated state house reporting of J. Andrew Curliss and Dan Kane of The Raleigh News & Observer proves. Their reporting over the past 20 months on North Carolina Speaker of the House Jim Black has shaken up state politics, pushing Black to resign his powerful post, leading to at least three criminal convictions, exposing the state's own House page scandal coverup and prompting new ethics laws. Rather than one big series, Kane, Curliss and other News & Observer reporters wrote dozens of stories that show the value of aggressive daily beat reporting. http://www.newsobserver.com/1179/index.html