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Keenan Chen

@kcinbk.bsky.social
1.2K followers 209 following 63 posts

- Data investigations for @chicago.suntimes.com and @wbez.org - Formerly First Draft News, brownpublichealth.bsky.social, Columbia Journalism Investigations - Lang: 普通話, 廣東話 - Email: kchen[at]chicagopublicmedia.org - Personal site: kcinbk.github.io

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Keenan Chen @kcinbk.bsky.social · 23/06/2026
The city has also brought fewer major lawsuits against landlords than it did a decade ago. While many advocates want more fines and enforcement, others warn of the risk of “bankrupting landlords, who might just walk away from these buildings,” leaving their liens and unpaid bills to taxpayers.
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Keenan Chen @kcinbk.bsky.social · 23/06/2026
For example, new laws were supposed to force landlords to quickly fix fire-safety violations or face stiff fines after a 2022 Bronx high-rise fire that claimed 17 lives. But 25% of violations issued since then have remained unresolved, along with other violations deemed immediately hazardous.
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Keenan Chen @kcinbk.bsky.social · 23/06/2026
After a 2022 Bronx high-rise fire claiming 17 lives, new laws were supposed to force landlords to quickly fix fire-safety violations or face stiff fines. But 25% of these violations issued since have remained unresolved, along with other violations deemed immediately hazardous.
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Keenan Chen @kcinbk.bsky.social · 12/06/2026
The data shows detectives were closing out cases much more quickly as caseloads rose.
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Keenan Chen @kcinbk.bsky.social · 12/06/2026
From zero reported cases in November to over 1,200 cases by the end of April, criminals are targeting parked vehicles in northern and western communities like Lake View, Lincoln Park and Logan Square. (with @justinmyers.net
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Keenan Chen @kcinbk.bsky.social · 10/03/2026
A year ago, I wrote about NYC's parking corruption using publicly available data and evidence. @nydailynews.com today reports an Adams admin official giving out NYPD placards like candy. No wonder parking agents, civilians employed by NYPD, rarely ticket these bogus permits. tinyurl.com/3mc9cpt3
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Keenan Chen @kcinbk.bsky.social · 27/01/2026
Since PlowNYC is currently offline, I decided to take matters into my own hands and built a map to track snow removal efforts by DSNY using the department’s extensive GPS data from its fleet of snow removal vehicles. You can find the tracker at kcinbk.github.io/SnowDay_NYC/
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Keenan Chen @kcinbk.bsky.social · 12/12/2025
The overtime payroll spike is largely driven by the city’s austerity-focused fiscal policies aimed at cutting short-term costs. The result? Delays and errors surged, directly impacting some of the city’s most vulnerable residents.
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Keenan Chen @kcinbk.bsky.social · 11/12/2025
You can actually see the changes—the removal of human causes of climate change—side-by-side on the Internet Archive. web.archive.org/web/diff/202...
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Keenan Chen @kcinbk.bsky.social · 05/11/2025
Made a precinct-level map on the results of the NYC six ballot measures. - A majority of voters in almost every single precinct on Staten Island voted against all of these proposals. - Affordable housing–related measures proved popular even in some affluent neighborhoods and also outer borough.
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Keenan Chen @kcinbk.bsky.social · 12/09/2025
Conservative voices are now coalescing around the idea of “online radicalization,” claiming Kirk’s suspected shooter, a white, Christian male, was groomed into a violent leftist. Quite a surprising turn, given their past hostility to the concept rigorously researched by academics and journalists.
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Keenan Chen @kcinbk.bsky.social · 22/08/2025
The CEO told @nytimes.com it’s fine for reporters to take cash to cover their expenses. That’s just false. Like any newsroom, the paper barred editorial staff from taking cash. And if he’s worried about fair comp for his reporters, give them a raise instead of paying barely minimum wages.
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Keenan Chen @kcinbk.bsky.social · 25/06/2025
And when you factor in regulated rental units across New York City, the overall effect of the ban appears even more limited.
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Keenan Chen @kcinbk.bsky.social · 25/06/2025
While it's always tricky to draw direct correlations, less than 10% of the market-rate rental listings on StreetEasy have increased asking rents immediately following the news of the ban on June 10.
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Keenan Chen @kcinbk.bsky.social · 03/06/2025
She’s essentially calling a naturalized citizen "illegal" in another comment, while her a district- including Whitestone, Flushing, and Little Neck- has a significant population of foreign-born Chinese and Cantonese residents. Curious how the local Chinese-language press will cover this, or not.
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Keenan Chen @kcinbk.bsky.social · 17/04/2025
The @dallasnews.com is hiring a Cowboys beat reporter? I know someone highly passionate and extremely available.
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Keenan Chen @kcinbk.bsky.social · 16/04/2025
Great reporting by @sophlebo.bsky.social on dangerous vehicles in NYC. Lax enforcement is also allowing out-of-state plates to keep roaming: over 4,000 such vehicles were caught at least 15 times in 2024 and still haven’t paid their fines, accounting for 45% of the most egregious repeat offenders.
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Keenan Chen @kcinbk.bsky.social · 07/04/2025
Back from two weeks in Asia. What did I miss in the US?
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Keenan Chen @kcinbk.bsky.social · 14/03/2025
The bigger picture-- A growing share of Americans are getting their information from social media content creators, and there're many " Jordans" out there profiting from marketing misleading information in plain sight, further deepening divisions in an already deeply polarized society.
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Keenan Chen @kcinbk.bsky.social · 14/03/2025
In the meantime, he YouTube following has surpassed many news outlets covering New York City, making him one of the most prominent journalists covering NYC on what has become the primary news source for a significant share of Americans.
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Keenan Chen @kcinbk.bsky.social · 14/03/2025
Cash Jordan began posting open-house videos on YouTube shortly after the pandemic started. But with the election approaching, his channel shifted to be completely about homeless people and migrants turning the city into a real-life Gotham, often using AI-generated visuals to reinforce the message.
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Keenan Chen @kcinbk.bsky.social · 07/02/2025
The same congressman who introduced the bill to increase USAID's funding by MORE THAN A BILLION is now saying the agency cannot be trusted.
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Keenan Chen @kcinbk.bsky.social · 06/02/2025
By analyzing Department of Finance's fine payment data since 2020, I identified: - Over 3,500 license plates either paid fines to settle multiple citations or were found guilty in court; - Over 1,100 had repeat violations each year across multiple years; - Worst offenders had 40-plus citations.
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Keenan Chen @kcinbk.bsky.social · 15/11/2024
👀 Fun tidbit from experimenting with the PullPush API to dig through Reddit data: Children's Health Defense (CHD), the anti-vaccine group RFK Jr. founded, maintains a Reddit account and has made over 1,400 posts since 2020. Their top destinations? r/Conspiracy and r/Conspiracy_commons.
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Keenan Chen @kcinbk.bsky.social · 14/11/2024
You can read the full report here: lnkd.in/eiefUc2M And for all you who are interested in about our investigation approach, here are some highlights from our methodology:
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Keenan Chen @kcinbk.bsky.social · 14/11/2024
As 🌍 COP29 is underway, I want to share again my final research on what we CAN do to improve climate change communication for Brown University's Information Futures Lab. (Thread)
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