A reflection on 2023 and reader survey for 2024

As we enter the waning days of 2023, the contributors at Bull City Public Investigators offer a reflection of our first publishing year and ask you to complete a brief poll looking to 2024.

A lot happened in the Bull City this year, but not all of it made headlines. As traditional media coverage of local issues continues to be a fraction of what it was in the past, big decisions, important trends and pivotal connections get buried in civic documents, public data and meeting minutes. Bull City Public Investigators aims to fill in some of the gaps. We try to only cover unique stories or parts of stories that are not otherwise being reported. Although we are not journalists by trade and we don’t often have the resources to be the ones to break many stories, we understand that an informed public makes for an engaged citizenry, and our hope is that our stories provide helpful, deeper context about what’s happening in Durham.

We gained a lot of early traction in 2023 when we were the only (albeit fledgling) outlet covering the resignation of Matt Sears, who unceremoniously became the second School Board member to resign shortly after re-election to take a paid position at the privately-run Durham Public Schools Foundation. We saw our continued coverage appear to change financial decisions at the School Board when DPS unexpectedly pumped the brakes on giving the same privately-run DPS Foundation $1 million of public funds with no agreement or even a coherent plan in place on how those funds would be utilized.

The first BCPI article to gain thousands upon thousands of views was our coverage of how other cities who host prestigious private universities have been collecting Payments in Lieu of Taxes (PILOT), voluntary negotiated payments from their untaxed institutional landholders whose endowments have ballooned into the billions of dollars. We’ve seen a newly-elected council member Tweet about the issue after we spoke with him on the topic and again during the height of his campaign. Although we haven’t heard Council discuss the matter yet, it does sound as though some wheels are turning in the community around the concept.

And of course there was SCAD. BCPI: Open Sources performed hours of research of public records to determine there was a massive gulf in land ownership and real estate interests between the public proponents and public opponents of SCAD. A slim majority of Council then passed the bulk of SCAD in the face of steep opposition from one of the broadest and deepest coalitions of residents to ever address Council on a public hearing topic.

As an exciting year in the Bull City comes to a close, we want to say thanks for being one of the thousands of Durhamites to follow along with us this year! From our beginnings with the School Board coverage to our data-centered BCPI: Open Sources analyses, we’ve seen tens of thousands of visits to our stories over this past year—so thank you for fueling this effort!

In celebration and reflection of the end of our first year of publishing, we put together a collection of our most and least read stories of the year, as measured by total visitors.

Most Read

1. Records show landlords, real estate investors largely make up SCAD proponents

2. Could Durham Ask Duke for Payment in Lieu of Taxes?

3. Durham's drinking water supply at risk on two fronts

Least Read

1. Amid DPS after-school care scarcity, false start to signup sparks confusion

2. School Board questions, alters plan to give DPS Foundation $1-million for housing

3. DPS Foundation could receive $1.28-million allotment from DPS, draft plan shows

We’d love your input to help shape our coverage in 2024, so please take a few minutes to fill out the survey below (you have to be a subscriber to participate—that’s a Substack rule, not ours). We remain committed to prioritizing access to information and being a free-to-read publication. Likewise, we have rejected generous offers of monetary sponsorship from some of our readers. If you’d like to help us out, please share our work with your neighbors and friends.

Happy new year to you!

If you have other ideas for stories—either specific issues or broad categories—please leave a comment on this story or email us at bcpi.durham@gmail.com

Downtown Durham. Photo from Colin Rowley via Unsplash.