Our Work

La Verne Daily News | January 22, 2026
 

Branch Four helped La Verne Daily News uncover trends in the city’s 2025 business growth. The newsroom wanted to report on newly opened businesses but lacked the technical capacity to identify and analyze them. Branch Four scraped, cleaned, categorized, and analyzed new business permit records, then built two interactive visualizations: a searchable map of new businesses and a hierarchy chart showing the distribution of business types.

The analysis revealed that La Verne’s recent business growth was driven primarily by service-based businesses rather than traditional retail or dining, with most new businesses continuing to cluster along the city’s main commercial corridor. These insights helped the newsroom produce a more data-driven, visually engaging story that gave residents a clearer picture of how the local economy is evolving.

The Waltham Times | December 10, 2025

 Branch Four partnered with The Waltham Times to investigate the growing safety concerns surrounding electric bikes in the community. While the newsroom had identified the issue through local reporting, it needed reliable data and research to validate broader trends and put the problem into context.

Branch Four collected and analyzed national injury and fatality data comparing e-bikes with traditional bicycles, along with academic research examining pediatric injury patterns and death rates. The analysis showed that e-bike-related injuries, and the severity of e-bike injuries are rising nationwide. These findings helped strengthen the newsroom’s reporting, providing evidence-based context for discussions around local safety reforms, enforcement, and public awareness.

Montclair Local | November 20, 2025

Branch Four partnered with Montclair Local on an investigation into whether a school business administrator had directed school board funds to potentially questionable vendors. The newsroom needed to analyze months of dense financial records, but the data existed only in scanned PDF bill lists that could not be easily searched, scraped, or processed with standard AI tools.

After consulting with a national news organization and being advised to extract the data manually, Montclair Local turned to Branch Four for a scalable solution. Branch Four scraped and digitized six months of scanned billing records, cleaned and verified the payment data, and created clean records of vendors and transactions. The team then enriched each vendor profile with background information — including addresses, industries, incorporation dates, business descriptions, and ownership details — and analyzed the records for patterns commonly associated with shell companies, unusual spending, and vendor concentration trends.

The resulting analysis helped power an investigative story showing that a food service vendor received substantial financial rewards despite mounting concerns surrounding the contract. The reporting also uncovered a dispute of more than half a million dollars between the school district and the vendor, giving residents greater visibility into how public funds were being managed.

The Waltham Times | November 4, 2025

 Branch Four supported The Waltham Times during the 2025 federal government shutdown, when disruptions to SNAP benefits created uncertainty for many local families. The newsroom wanted to report on how residents were coping with the cuts and how nonprofits and community members were stepping in to provide support, but needed local data to show the scale of the issue.

Branch Four gathered and analyzed SNAP participation data and historical trends, revealing that SNAP enrollment in Waltham had steadily risen in recent years to approximately 5,500 residents in 2025. The analysis helped contextualize the human impact of the benefit disruptions, strengthening the story with clear evidence of how many community members relied on the program and why local relief efforts mattered.