Harold Schreifels died at the Homewood Care Center in San Jose after his blood sugar dipped dangerously low. The home has cut staffing even as it has received about a million dollars in additional funds.
I worked with print reporter Christina Jewett as she interviewed several families about deaths and nursing home spending. We decided together that the Schreifels story translated well to video and I accompanied her on reporting trips down to San Jose. This story, and the multimedia accompaniments, was one of California Watch’s Pulitzer entries. The video, database and print stories were picked up and run in several newspapers across California, including the San Francisco Chronicle and Orange County Register and on KQED online.
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Users can explore in detail the 645 nursing homes that gained the most under a 2004 law designed to help hire more caregivers and boost wages. The database shows each home’s revenue under the new law, net income, staffing rates and staffing wages. Also, users can sort through facilities with a google map displaying homes that were under the state minimums and by county.
I built and designed this django database with data analyst Agustin Armendariz. The data all comes from information that we had collected while reporting and that we needed to crunch for the print story. Because of the sheer number of homes, we decided to automate it using Django, the Google Charts API and the Google Map API.
This story, and the multimedia accompaniments, was one of California Watch’s Pulitzer entries. The database, video and print stories were picked up and run in several newspapers across California, including the San Francisco Chronicle and Orange County Register and on KQED online.
California Watch, a branch of the Center for Investigative Reporting, launched online in January 2010. I helped lead the development and design effort, working with contract designers and developers, editors and reporters to decide everything from new features, content organization, work flow and design. We brainstormed as an editorial team to decide on features, while I had daily Scrum meetings with the developers to work on implementation. I also led a team of four testers as the site went into production. Currently, I also work with a developer to implement new tools on the site.