Author Archives: Justine88

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HSN featured jewelry company accused of cheating its artisans

bajalia1
Tampa Bay Times, Feb. 5, 2017, A1 

By Justine Griffin

People tuning in to HSN might think they’re supporting a good cause by purchasing a lapis bracelet from Bajalia International Group, an Orlando company that employs female artisans in developing countries like Afghanistan and India.

What shoppers don’t see on their TV screens is the sometimes ruthless business arrangements between Bajalia and its artisans, the company’s history of short-changing its craftswomen or the checkered financial past of the company’s founder and CEO.

On air at HSN, Debbie Farah is portrayed as a savior for women in poor and developing nations who produce the natural gemstone necklaces and beaded bracelets that Farah’s company sells online and on HSN, the popular television retailer based in St. Petersburg.

A follow up story published on March 17, 2017, when HSN dropped Bajalia from its programming. The story was featured on WSTP Ch. 10’s Sunday Conversation.

Read the original investigation here.

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The New York Times: Should young women sell their eggs?

The New York Times wrote about egg donation and included The Cost of Life in this Oct. 21, 2016, piece.

“Justine Griffin submitted an application to donate her eggs to a fertility clinic in Florida, detailing everything about herself from her appearance to her SAT scores. An infertile couple liked what they saw on paper and Ms. Griffin was notified that they wanted to buy her eggs.”

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Tampa Bay Times: Tampa International Airport is willing to spend money to make money on international flights

By Justine Griffin for the Tampa Bay Times. October 14, 2016

airport

Orlando International Airport hasn’t ever had trouble recruiting new flights.

Airliners have been lining up for years to link new cities from around the globe to Disney World, Universal Studios and Central Florida’s other tourism attractions.

But last year, the Orlando airport introduced a financial incentive program meant to help lure new airline business.

The program mimicked what Tampa International Airport instituted more than five years ago, which has helped bring high-profile international flights like nonstop service to Frankfurt, Germany, on Lufthansa and service to Panama City, Panama, on Copa Airlines, to Tampa Bay.

The new incentive program in Orlando ultimately helped the airport draw a nonstop flight to Dubai on international airliner Emirates.

Tampa’s entry into the world of airline incentives didn’t come without controversy: Airport CEO Joe Lopano drew public criticism when he asked for permission to throw money at airlines after he arrived in Tampa in 2011. He eventually got the go-ahead, but it was new terrain for the airport.

Read more in the Tampa Bay Times here.

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Tampa Bay Times: Walmart stores around Tampa Bay found selling expired products, including baby food

By Justine Griffin for the Tampa Bay Times.

walmart

First came the irritation when Deneen Wyman discovered she had bought expired baby formula at an area Walmart store on Sunday. Then came the added insult when she sought a refund and was sold yet another baby formula that had been outdated since May.

It wasn’t an isolated incident.

Read more in the Tampa Bay Times here.

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And the follow up story: 

Shoppers in St. Petersburg took to Facebook to express their outrage over finding expired baby formula and other goods at a local Walmart three weeks ago. The post quickly went viral.

The Tampa Bay Times wrote a front page story about it and a local television station covered it.

At the time, Walmart said employees were working fast to fix the problem. They pledged to do better.

For the next three weeks, Tampa Bay Times reporters browsed the aisles of Walmart stores around Tampa Bay looking for more expired goods. We continued to find expired baby formula, sour cream, baby food, supplements and prenatal vitamins at Walmart Supercenters and Walmart Neighborhood Market stores in Hillsborough and Pinellas counties despite the media coverage that revealed the problem at local stores. Dozens of Times readers also wrote and called in with stories and photos about buying expired goods from Walmart stores in Brandon, Brooksville, Wimauma, Clearwater, Ruskin, Sebring and elsewhere.

Read more in the Tampa Bay Times here.

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Poynter: How millennial journalists are unraveling local news for their peers

Poynter featured the Sarasota Herald-Tribune’s project, Unravel, which is a millennial news site for young professionals in the Sarasota area. I was one of the founding editors behind the project.

 

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The idea for a site devoted to Sarasota’s millennials didn’t come from that generation. It came from a design-thinking challenge led by Bill Church, the newly appointed senior vice president for news at parent company GateHouse Media.

The challenge? Figure out a way to reach an audience they weren’t serving.

A small team at the Herald-Tribune started with focus groups and get-togethers. That team, led by Justine Griffin, decided not to treat a generation as if it were all the same. Young professionals, they figured, were already invested and active in the community. Now, they needed to be informed.

But they didn’t want to be fooled.

“They said the biggest thing they didn’t want was to be duped into going back to Herald-Tribune,” said Griffin, 28, who’s now a business reporter at the Poynter-owned Tampa Bay Times.

Read more here.