In this week's newsletter: Asian American influencers and online community-builders are confronting difficult identity issues after the recent string of racist attacks.
How signatures in public data helped expose the UK’s dirty money cottage industry
Combining public data with leaked FinCEN reports, ICIJ’s data team plotted a matrix of shadowy straw men who filed false accounts worth more than $4.5 billion. February 10, 2021
Deep inside the FinCEN Files, a cache of more than 2,600 secret documents, lies a data story within a data story.
Early in 2020, while the world was gripped by a deadly pandemic, the ICIJ data team was digging into the accounts of hundreds of shell companies filed with Companies House, the United Kingdom’s company registration office.
This foray into public data was part of ICIJ and BuzzFeed News’ FinCEN Files investigation, which would eventually expose how some of the world’s biggest banks were at the center of a sprawling global money laundering industry. Reporting by more than 100 media partners showed how trillions of dollars of suspicious wire funds flowed through the banks, sometimes years before
July 13, 2016 Subtext certainly isn’t the first initiative to see the appeal in news organizations texting readers. A couple years back, news organizations experimented with using Facebook Messenger to let readers text bots. (It didn’t catch on.) Other early experiments included the texting platform Purple, which was acquired by The Skimm in 2019. Outlier Media pioneered a local-journalism-via-texting service that connected low-income residents with helpful information about issues like housing and utilities.
Subtext differs in that it’s a platform offering texting as a tool for news organizations.
The privacy of texting means users don’t experience the same toxicity or endless doomscrolling that you would on social media, making it a friendlier and healthier interaction. Donoghue said that overall, only one person has ever been removed by a host as a subscriber for misusing the platform.
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Two people who protested outside an Ohio restaurant last summer were charged with assault because an employee claimed she suffered hearing damage from the sounds of their megaphones.
In January, a Cuyahoga County grand jury indicted Josiah Douglas, 25, and Sydney Yahner, 21, on one count each of felonious assault in connection with the July 12 protest in the alley behind the restaurant TownHall in Cleveland, court documents show. Yahner pleaded not guilty, according to online court records. Douglas was scheduled to be arraigned in February.
In a statement, their attorney, Peter Pattakos, called the decision to prosecute the two outrageous and said the charges sent a chilling message to anyone wishing to exercise their right to protest.