Publication Items

Three major electric utilities want the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio (PUCO) to make ratepayers pay for aging and unprofitable coal and nuclear generation plants in that state. But the ratepayers — the utilities claim — aren't entitled to know whether they might be ripped off.

In this excerpt from the latest issue of SEJournal (Fall), Webster University journalism professor Don Corrigan shares how he used his classroom as a focal point for generating material with student inquiry and invitations to local experts, resulting in publication of a guide to St. Louis' environmental issues — and how the book can serve as a template for other professors to write a book for other states or regions.

Here's an idea: let people know where 100-car trainloads of crude oil might be threatening their safety. After the July 2013 Lac-Mégantic disaster that killed 47, people might want to know about this. And the Federal Railroad Administration officially agrees — saying railroads can't hide this information. Now the Association of Washington Cities has an online map for that.

The growing number of threats and assaults against employees of federal land agencies in the West is certainly the public's business. But efforts to document it by High Country News using the Freedom of Information Act have been thwarted by the Bureau of Land Management's central FOIA office. Veteran journalist Ray Ring tells the sad tale in HCN.