Broken Trust

Posted on March 20, 2007 by Melissa Worden

Whew, it’s been a busy month. Here’s some of what I’ve been up to lately: Working on a piece of “Broken Trust,” a comprehensive report about teachers in Florida schools what have been investigated by the state for inappropriate behavior.

Charlie Szymanski and Maurice Tamman did an amazing job creating an interactive database with which you can find details about the accused teachers’ acts in a map- or text-based search. It’s a deep, useful site that has the potential to make a real difference in our lives; it reminds me why I love journalism so much.

Click on the “Case flow” tab to see what reporter Tiffany Lankes and I produced: An interactive flowchart that describes each step along the way of reporting abuse with audio clips from Dr. Robert Shoop, a professor of educational law at Kansas State University. I found it to be a challenging project because it is such a confusing, complicated system. During production, we decided that was the best way to illustrate it — go ahead and let the reader feel a similar frustration they might experience in reality.